A Dash of Style (16 page)

Yeah, it was really "cold." I had to shed two shirts just to stop sweating. It's the last time I listen to her.

The banker's "smile" sent shivers through my spine.

Quotation marks around individual words might also indicate that we are reading someone's interpretation of a word or phrase:

My piano teacher gave me another "lesson." It wasn't a lesson at all. We played for two minutes, and he spent the rest of the hour trying to pick me up. What a jerk.

Let's look at some examples from literature. Dan Chaon uses this technique well in his short story "Big Me":

Before that, everything was a peaceful blur of childhood, growing up in the small town of Beck, Nebraska. A "town," we called it. Really, the population was just less than two hundred, and it was one of those dots along Highway 30 that people didn't usually

even slow down for, though strangers sometimes stopped at the little gas station near the grain elevator, or ate at the cafe.

By putting it in quotation marks, the word "town" here is not meant to be taken literally; indeed, Chaon goes on to explain exactly what that "town" consisted of. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses a similar technique in her "Sonnet 20" from her
Sonnets from the Portuguese:

Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated Should seem "a cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it, Remember, never to the hill or plain, Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.

Here she quotes her lover, and then plays on the meaning of that quote, transforming it into an analogy of spring, and of something transcendent.

In any of these ways, quotation marks can transform a word or phrase into something which it is not.

"Speech has a prodigious non verbal arsenal: pitch, stress, pause, intonation, facial expression, gesture, body language. It was to make up for the loss of speech accoutrements that punctuation gradually developed."

—Rene J. Cappon.

The Associated Press Guide
to
Punctuation

Let's look at some more examples from classic literature. Flannery O'Connor used quotation marks brilliantly. Here's an excerpt from her short story "Revelation":

Mrs. Turpin put a firm hand on Claud's shoulder and said in a voice that included anyone who wanted to listen, "Claud, you sit in that chair there," and gave him a push down into the vacant one.

Instead of following convention and putting the quotation in its own paragraph, O'Connor, in the midst of one long sentence, winds up into the quotation and winds down afterward, burying the quotation inside. By doing this, the quotation feels like an extension of the action, subtly makes us feels as if there is no distinction between Mrs. Turpin's acting and speaking; especially since she doesn't wait for a response, it feels as if her dialogue is a command—not a question. This is perfectly in line with her character and her relationship to Claud, as she is indeed bossy and overwhelming, and does everything at once, in a rush. All of this is captured by the well-placed quotation marks.

Kafka was equally adept with quotation marks. Consider the opening line of his famous story "In the Penal Colony":

"It's a remarkable piece of apparatus," said the officer to the explorer and surveyed with a certain air of admiration the apparatus which was after all quite familiar to him.

Kafka could have also followed convention and placed a period just before the concluding quotation marks, or after "officer," or after "explorer." But he chose not to do any of these things, to rather extend the sentence well past where it would normally end. All of this reflects on the quotation marks, since they initiate the sentence. Here, the extended sentence perfectly captures the mindset of the

officer, a man who is so anxious to show off his apparatus that he can barely finish speaking before he is already surveying it. Indeed, Kafka captures the very crux of the story in a single sentence. (Again, keep in mind that punctuation in translation is open to interpretation.) John Updike uses quotation marks skillfully in his story "A&P":

The girls, and who would blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say "I quit" to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.

The fact that the narrator quits is actually a significant moment in the story; yet it is buried here, hidden in quotation marks in the midst of a longer sentence. Updike wants to make readers work here, to make sure they are reading closely. He also, with the placement of these quotation marks, reflects the content, evoking the feeling of a boy quitting in midsentence, in midaction, spontaneously and unsure of himself.

... It was also ridiculous, unjust, and because he had always been a religious man, it was in a way an affront to God. Manischevitz believed this in all his suffering. When his burden had grown too crushingly heavy to be borne he prayed in his chair with shut hollow eyes: "My dear God, sweetheart, did I deserve that this should happen to me?" Then recognizing the worthlessness of it, he put aside the complaint and prayed humbly for assistance: "Give Fanny back her health, and to me for myself that I shouldn't feel pain in every step. Help now or tomorrow is too late. This I don't have to tell you." And Manischevitz wept.

This comes from Bernard Malamud's "Angel Levine." It is a remarkable use of quotation marks. Instead of giving each quotation its own paragraph and indentation (as one normally would), Malamud

buries them toward the end of a long paragraph (the paragraph was much longer than this, redacted for this example). And then to cap it off, he does not conclude the paragraph with a quotation, but continues with one last sentence, burying the quotations even further. The feeling evoked is one of despair, of drowning, of dialogue that goes unanswered and of a man at the end of his rope.

DANGER OF OVERUSE AND MISUSE

An abundance of quotation marks means an abundance of dialogue. A text dominated by dialogue will usually have an uneven, too-fast pace; it will often not be grounded in character, plot, or setting, the fundamentals of a book. This holds equally true for a work absent of quotation marks (and thus dialogue). Such a work will be dominated by prose, and it won't take long before the reader feels like he is struggling for air. The pace will slow to a crawl, and the chances of a reader staying with it will grow less likely with every page. Excessive dialogue can work in a screenplay, but a novel is a different medium, one which requires a dance between dialogue and prose, that each be given proper space and time. If a book leans too much in either direction, it can feel lopsided.

You must find the right balance between these two worlds, not always easy to do. There will be moments in your work that can use speeding up, and moments that will benefit by slowing down. Outside readers can help you get an objective eye on this, but in the meantime, if you are unsure, look to the quotation marks and you will be given an immediate picture. Many ailments can show themselves to you:

• Some writers rearrange the order of quotation marks within dialogue for no real reason. Few things are more jarring than having the position of quotation marks alternate with every line of dialogue. For example:

She said, "Pass the sugar." "It's over there," I said, "beside the ketchup." "Don't get snide with me," she answered. I said, "I'm not."

The alternating distracts from the dialogue itself, and worse, does so for no real reason. It is a mistake some amateur writers make. Quotation marks must never be moved within dialogue unless there is an important reason for doing so.

•In some trendy works (and classic works, too) you'll find that authors opt not to use quotation marks at all, but rather to indicate dialogue with some other mark, such as a dash, or italics, or no mark at all (not to be confused with paraphrasing). For example:

— I don't want your computer. I told you, I don't have any place to put it.

—But it's not that old.

—That's what you said last time. And you stuck me with a 1942 dishwasher.

They won't use the quotation mark to differentiate dialogue, but will rather let dialogue blend with the rest of the text. Even some great authors have done this, notably James Joyce or, more recently, Cormac McCarthy. Presumably this is done for the sake of being different, but to my mind this is just stylistic, and it makes it unnecessarily hard on the reader. Why boycott quotation marks? The quotation mark does its job very well: it's unique and highly visible. It is as near perfect as a punctuation mark could hope to be. It was invented in the first place because there was a need for a mark to help clearly indicate dialogue. Omitting it, or refusing to indent, or replacing it with dashes, will just confuse a reader.

There are, of course, exceptions. As I mentioned, even great authors have crafted works that, for whatever reason, avoided quotation marks. Consider this example from William Carlos Williams's "The Use of Force":

They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick. When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.

Williams is a brilliant writer, and this is an exceptional short story, and I can understand why he avoided quotation marks. That said, I nonetheless would have preferred to have them here; I feel it just burdens the reader with unnecessary effort, and diverts the energy to trying to decipher who is speaking.

• Occasionally one encounters a work where quotation marks are used heavily to offset individual words, often in order to indicate irony or sarcasm. For example:

He said I didn't have an "eye" for detail, that I didn't "know" what to do, that I was just "beginning" to enter this world—like he's such an "expert."

Such works usually come hand in hand with flippant writing, where a cynical tone prevails. The problem with this, aside from being stylistic, is that it becomes a safety cushion. When every other word is encapsulated by quotation marks to indicate irony or sarcasm, the writer clearly uses it as an escape, to avoid definitively taking a stand himself. Eventually it will lose its effect and turn readers off.

CONTEXT

Quotation marks are the quintessential team player. They never muscle other punctuation marks out of their way—on the contrary, they need and embrace them. As we saw above, quotation marks by themselves can only go so far in creating an effect. If they want to indicate pauses, breaks, and momentous moments in dialogue, they need help from the comma, period, dash, and colon. Let's look at some of the ways they work together:

• Without the comma, quotation marks cannot even conclude a basic line of dialogue:

"I'm going to the laundry," he said. They also need commas to indicate a pause, and to continue dialogue:

"I'm going to the laundry," he said, "and you're not coming with

me."

• Periods are equally needed by quotation marks, since dialogue cannot be concluded without them:

"I'm going to the laundry."

• Quotation marks need colons if they want to help indicate finality or a revelation:

I looked at him and said: "Don't ever talk to me again."

•And without dashes, quotation marks couldn't indicate interruption:

"I really don't think you should — " "I don't care what you think," he said.

Just about the only marks that don't do well with quotation marks are semicolons and parentheses. Theoretically these marks can be used within dialogue, but they are hard to hear within speech and are thus better suited for prose.

• Dialogue itself is all about context. Too much prose without dialogue is anathema, while too much dialogue without prose is equally so. One must develop an ear for knowing when prose needs a break, and when dialogue needs to curtail itself. It's a delicate balance, and quotation marks are the great indicator. Consider this fine example from Katherine Anne Porter's story "The Martyr":

When earnest-minded people made pilgrimages down the narrow, cobbled street, picked their way carefully over puddles in the patio, and clattered up the uncertain stairs for a glimpse of the great and yet so simple personage, she would cry, "Here come the pretty sheep!" She enjoyed their gaze of wonder at her daring.

Here the dialogue stands out, as it comes on the heels of such a long sentence, such a long stretch of prose. It almost feels as if the long sentence is building momentum, which culminates with the quotation.

"Although the authorized version of the Bible is abuzz with speeches, dialogue and discussion, there is not a single quotation mark in sight. This would hardly do todav.

— Graham King,
Collins Good Punctuation

WHAT YOUR USE OF QUOTATION MARKS REVEALS ABOUT YOU

In many cases, a publishing professional need only flip through a manuscript to get an immediate idea of its worth: quotation marks tell the story.

A writer who overuses dialogue (and thus quotation marks) doesn't have an acute sense of pacing, doesn't realize that a work can progress too fast. He relies heavily on dialogue, which means he's also using it poorly, since overuse comes hand in hand with misuse. He might, for instance, be using dialogue as a means of conveying information. He is more likely a beginner, plot oriented, and anxious for a fast pace. Alternately, he might be a playwright or screenwriter-turned-author, stuck in the remnants of his previous form. In either case, he is more likely to neglect setting and character development. He is impatient, believes too much in the power of speech, and not enough in the power of silence. And since dialogue rates fairly high on the drama scale, this writer is likely to be overdramatic.