Well I just finished off another Terry Pratchett book and there were no emdashes :p

I do agree about the bickering though, but when someone makes wild claims like saying I read only 'uncultured' books or that his books have 'five times per paragraph' I feel the need to say something, merely laughing at my monitor isn't enough

Edit: and yes, I realize I'm still contributing to the bickering

I just had a quick look through my copy of The Fifth Elephant (Pratchett again) and there were em-dashes everywhere. They were quite obviously em-dashes because they were noticeably wider than end-of-line hyphenation.

Most word processors and markdown-style languages for the web (eg markdown and textile) will turn -- into an em-dash automatically. So it makes a good substitute if you don't want to remember the specific code.

Edit: Just looked at a load more Pratchett books and they too use em-dashes quite frequently.

What? He barely even used dashes, let alone emdashes- ah you know what? forget it, you win or whatever, I don't care and Freelancers reactions still sound just as idiotic no matter who's right about emdashes =p




Edit: major apologies Koobie, I was reading one of your posts as I typed that and ended up typing out your name by accident. There goes whatever credibility I had left here

Excuse me?

I just picked up a random Discworld book (Pyramids) that happened to be on my desk and it had an emdash on the first page, and the second page, and the seventh page, and the eighth page (four actually), and the ninth page, and the tenth page, and the eleventh page, and the twelfth page, and the thirteenth, and I am starting to think you may be mistaken.

His format has changed dramatically since the old books, but I already conceded defeat with that particular thing, you might see me saying so in the very post you quoted (albeit non-committedly, because as I said, I don't really care)

It sounded more like a strategic withdrawal than a concession of defeat.

I can see why you'd think that, but it's not the case. I admit I was wrong about not seeing emdashes, but freelancers ridiculous responses egged me on to fight, but me being wrong about emdashes doesn't change how silly freelancer looked in his last couple of posts.

Overall though, it's quite obvious who was really right here: saberopus.

No worries, I was just slightly taken by surprise.

Hehe, naturally!

Generally, almost any dash you see in a novel is going to be an em-dash. End-of-line hyphenation is pretty rare, as is what I just did there with 'end-of-line'. You'll occasionally see an en-dash, but they're nowhere near as common because their usage is quite specific.

I was exaggerating a little when claiming the frequency of em-dashes in Pratchett's work, he doesn't use them anywhere near as often as a lot of authors, but from a quick scan he uses them about once per page on average. Frequent use of em-dashes (something I'm guilty of) is often a sign of poor sentence structure, so the amount Pratchett uses them seems pretty balanced to me.

Frequent use, perhaps, but I've noticed that better writers are far more likely to use them on occasion. I prefer to read works that make good use of them. To me it's pleasant to have different cadences caused in part by them.

Again, nobody cares. The different kinds of dashes serve no purpose other than confusion. Worry about what matters, not what dash to use.

In all honesty, while I think that Sir Terry Pratchett does write funny, witty, and very entertaining books (at least, in most of the cases), I wouldn't hold him as a standard of great technical skill that all fiction writers should adhere to.

The half-a-page footnotes alone can make a strong case against that.

To be honest, after having read quite a few of his books, I just can't bring myself to read any more. I have had the 37th Discworld novel (Unseen Academicals) sit on my shelf for months now.

He's been pretty hit and miss of late, but his earlier books are almost all thoroughly good reads. I found that I had to read them in the right order though (not chronological, but by characters), I started with the City Watch, moved onto the Wizards and then the Witches, then finished with all the one-off books.

I don't hold him as a standard of great technical skills, but then again even the great books from great authors show remarkably little respect for 'the rules'. But what he does do is show remarkable restraint from overusing any single construct. There are authors who will use emphasis of some kind with alarming regularity, to the point that they stop being useful as a means of impact.

He also shows a willingness to drop his signature traits (lack of chapters, lots of footnotes etc) when appropriate. For example, Going Postal is the first of his Discworld novels to have chapters. The Thief of Time is the first book to do something other than a line break symbol as a means of changing scene. For an author as prolific as he is, the fact that he's still trying new things is a good thing (I think).

tl;dr - I don't object to authors breaking 'the rules', but I like it when they break the rules for a reason, not out of laziness.

Oh, I agree absolutely.

<3 Moist von Lipwig

New version:



Opinions?

'Pieces of broken bottles' sounds a little off to me. Not sure how to word it any better though.
"Pieces of bottle"
"shards of broken glass"
"shards of bottle"

Dunno, maybe just change bottles to bottle.
"Pieces of broken bottle"

FYI, professional manuscript writers HATE it when the first thing you learn about a character is the color of their hair/eyes/whatever.

Hmm. Thanks. Will have to edit the very first paragraph if it's going to be shards. Cool, point taken.



Mmm... I guess that would vary case to case. But definitely something to keep in mind, thanks. You're right, thanks.

Also, here's something from much later in the story (a scene where 3 Red Pills bikers and 1 journalist are being chased by a whole bunch of "police"):

Or is this a little bit too hardcore for a YA audience?

Depends, what's a YA?

Oh, probably young audience


or what Thrawn said >_>

year-old

oh wait young adult

Yeah. I reckon that if I don't say **** or ****, they're as good victims as any.

Grammar?
I thought this was a thread about Frasier.

As in Iron-like?

Metaphorically speaking, quite bluntly so.

(and before anyone says anything, I'm referring to the word "iron" and not the word "blunt" here / kthx)

(nvm)

Here's the full text of the story (the fourth version of the first draft, at least):

http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=57157

Would be really cool if you would share your opinions on it if you have some free time.