I'm glad to know this isn't universal. Because it just seems so wrong! I hope it started out as something reasonable. Like a complaint about people using 'fancy' dialogue tags for no reason -- he elucidated -- or using words that can't describe dialogue -- he smiled -- and then it went overboard.
But my characters will continue to hiss and bark and mumble as needed. ;)
Also, I think sometimes people are far too pedantic about following rules, to the point that they misunderstand the context. It may be impossible to sigh more than a single word, but how does one write a line of dialogue where the speaker pauses halfway through the sentence to sigh? For example: "I'll speak to the bank about an extension, but then..." she sighed and shook her head, "then I just don't know." Here, 'she sighed' isn't precisely a dialogue tag. It identifies the speaker, but it doesn't describe how she said what she said, but what she did while she was saying it, and that's clear from the context.
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chiming
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Date: 2011-02-15 12:59 am (UTC)From:But my characters will continue to hiss and bark and mumble as needed. ;)
Also, I think sometimes people are far too pedantic about following rules, to the point that they misunderstand the context. It may be impossible to sigh more than a single word, but how does one write a line of dialogue where the speaker pauses halfway through the sentence to sigh? For example: "I'll speak to the bank about an extension, but then..." she sighed and shook her head, "then I just don't know." Here, 'she sighed' isn't precisely a dialogue tag. It identifies the speaker, but it doesn't describe how she said what she said, but what she did while she was saying it, and that's clear from the context.
If I'm making sense, anyway. ^^;