Shinykate brought up a very interesting point in a comment on one of my short stories (Dean Clough and Chips) and I hope she doesn’t mind me reproducing it here:

One problem I always have when writing in the first person... and when reading stuff written in the first person... well, I work hard to get the vocabulary right, and then sometimes find it contradicted by the punctuation. By which I mean I try hard to get the tone of voice just so, but often the people I write from the PoV of wouldn't have a strong command of written language... I try to use punctuation, paragraphing etc to help with the rhythm of the voice. That's what it's there for. Then when I read it back, I realise that I'm using complex grammar techniques that the narrator themselves would never use.

I use punctuation to pace the narrative as well as for the usual reason of making it easily understood. I’ve never given any thought to whether I should change my punctuation to suit the dialect or the educational level of the character. And I’m not sure how I could do it without the risk of introducing confusion.

wouldn't have a strong command of written language
Maybe not but, taking my story as an example, the character is speaking, not writing it down. So the objective was to write it so a reader could hear his voice. If the story was about him writing his tale I would have introduced spelling and punctuation errors but I would have made it clear that the errors were his, not mine!

I think the topic is quite fascinating and difficult to define. What does anyone else think?

Dee

I agree that this is interesting.

Unless the narrator is actually 'writing', I think the writer is free to give the appearance of not having a strong command of language, while still retaining control, if you see what I mean. I do agree that complex grammar would be out of keeping with the character. And, while the narrative could still be punctuated correctly, I imagine that the use of certain ways of mispunctuating could be quite effective.

Ani

It's a bit like the argument of dialogue versus speech. Dialogue is like speech, but is equally unlike it. General speech, in real life, is packed with repitition, pauses, stumbles, contradictions, tangents and forgetting the point of the conversation that you were supposed to be having in the first place. The two most common words in spoken english are "er" and "um". Fine if you're doing a script for Hugh Grant, but otherwise annoying.

Generally speaking, if you transcribe a typical conversation and try to replicate it in print it will read terrible, but if you cut and chop and clean and punctuate and keep track of the subject, the speech is transformed into something readable; it becomes dialogue.

I guess this is literary licence. The reader doesn't pick up on the grammar or punctuation because it doesn't stand out. I guess you would use the same rules with narrative. If you start playing with dialect you introduce stumbling blocks. Personally, I always find "spelled out" dialect painful to read. A better alternative is the use of certain phrases, or unusual grammar ("don't go breaking it" vs "divvent gaan brekkin it")

That's what I reckon.

Colin M.

A novel in which the language, grammar and syntax of the narrator changes in accordance with his increasing intelligence, is the brilliant and heart-breaking 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes. At the beginning, the narrator has a very low IQ, then is given a new drug to increase his intelligence. The book is in the form of his journal and slowly changes with his development. I won't spoil it be telling the ending.

Otherwise, this is a fascinating topic that I think we've discussed in slightly different forms before. I'd say that in a non first person novel, language/grammar/syntax should be consistent, and under the control of the author. This equates to the story-telling voice of someone orally telling a tale. The author should use this framework to convey accent, level of intelligence, etc, in such a way that is true to both the character concerned and the tone of the story. It is a kind of balancing act but not so difficult when you take responsibility for the story-telling voice: basically, you select enough to give local flavour but not so much to spoil the overall taste. (I can smell the dinner cooking at the moment.)

Dee's already made the point I wanted to make when I first read Kate's question about punctuation. A first person narrator is a stylistic device - a method of telling a story. In most cases there is no intention to give the impression that the narrator is 'writing' the story. Admittedly, this is exactly what is happening in my novel 'No Mystics' (shameless plug - Chapter 1 available in an archive near you), where the narrator is sometimes 'making notes' for his biography, which is being written by someone else, but is also sometimes describing, in present tense, what is happening around him. It has never once occurred to me that punctuation should match the character. Fortunately in this case it does anyway, as he's an articulate bloke whose education - grammar school but didn't finish sixth form - matches mine.

Personally, I wouldn't risk using poor punctuation to 'describe' a character, as I'm fairly certain no reader would ever get the point and it would only reflect badly on my command of grammar. I don't try to write in dialect, either. Accents can be hard enough to understand aurally; interpreted into phonetics they're impossible - and horrible.

I've not been around this site very long, so I don't know if anyone's ever done this, but an interesting assignment set by my Prose Fiction tutor when I did my degree was to write a short story in first person from the point of view of an inarticulate character; someone with an extremely restricted command of language. I remember writing mine very quickly then revising the punctuation to pace the story. As it was literally a character 'saying' everything that was happening, I took out all the commas, as they seemed to express an element of consideration - pausing to think - which didn't suit the narrative. Although it's certainly rather 'out of character' for me, as I'm no short story writer (didn't have a choice during the degree, though), I'll try to hunt it out and post it up - it's only 500 words or so. It's certainly an interesting challenge!

Julie

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If anyone's interested, the story's called 'Mammie's Boy' and it should be here: http://www.writewords.org.uk/archive/9765.asp