Punctuation adventures

[regshoe]

D. K. Broster's liking for dramatic . . . ellipses . . . has been remarked upon before, especially in The Wounded Name, which has about 6.4 ellipses per 1,000 words on average. Chantemerle, of which I am currently formatting a text file, is not so dramatic in general (about 3 per 1,000 words so far), though it does get pretty ellipsis-heavy in a few particularly emotional passages; and unlike Imre the punctuation is more or less perfectly standard, so I was slightly surprised on being confronted during today's text-corrections chapter with this monster:



Nineteen dots! Truly dramatically significant; clearly Broster and Taylor were just saving their ellipsis stores for where it really mattered. I must remember this for when I'm next writing TWN fic. . . . . . .

Comments

[edwardianspinsteraunt]

Oh my goodness! I mean, it does convey a long and emotional silence quite well, but nineteen dots.......(Though there's also part of me that wants to cheerfully do away with punctuation conventions and adopt this in my fics :P)

[regshoe]

I do like elegant use of punctuation to imply silences (and possibly things happening in the silences)! And I absolutely intend to adopt (possibly a slightly toned-down version of) this in Broster fic—it's canon-style, right???

[osprey_archer]

That is SO MANY DOTS! There must have been something about writing novels with gay (sub)text that brought it out in early twentieth century authors.

Delighted that you are continuing on your quest to upload all the Broster to gutenberg!

[regshoe]

Something about implying, rather than spelling out, strong emotion as expressed by long ellipses (No—I had not inherited a million.......)?

Delighted that you are continuing on your quest to upload all the Broster to gutenberg!

Oh good! I really ought to look into the possibility of transferring the eligible books from Faded Page, since I imagine more people who went looking for FotH would find it if it was on Gutenberg too—I think you can do it, because it's where the one of The Yellow Poppy seems to have come from, but I don't know about the details.

[sovay]

Nineteen dots!

That's . . . that's a lot . . .

[regshoe]

It certainly is. . . . . . . But I do like a little creativity in punctuation for dramatic effect!

[luzula]

Oh wow. Thank you for showing us this gem of punctuation. : D

[regshoe]

Hee, you're welcome—I hope it's a little insight into the entertainments of the ebook-making process. . . . . . .

[garonne]

Oh wow...

Looking forward to proofreading this! (I probably would have thought those dots were a typo :D )

[regshoe]

Oh good! Heh, and that's understandable :D

[adore]

Wow XD Do I count each dot as a passing second?

[regshoe]

Hee, quite possibly!

[hyarrowen]

Guinness Book of Records?

[regshoe]

XD Possibly—they've certainly beaten Edward Prime-Stevenson's record. . . . . . .