1. victo

    victo Active Member

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    Fiction and Numbers

    Discussion in 'Word Mechanics' started by victo, Feb 15, 2015.

    In fiction, would you consider the following examples to be correctly punctuated with the hyphens? I cannot reword because these examples represent exactly what was said.

    Mike said, “It was a ten-million-dollar-a-year acquisition.”

    Gary said, “My grandfather once owned a three-to-five-million-dollar-per-year business.”

    The accountant said, "The figures represented a five-to-ten-percent-a-year increase in sales.”

    Harold said, “Call nine-one-one.”

    Xaviera uttered, “The cashier stole the cash from register number six.”

    But, for dialogue in fiction, use numbers in these:

    Frank said, “Jen and I are staying in Room 202.”

    Barry said, “Mike's telephone number is 607-868-4412."
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2015
  2. Void

    Void Senior Member

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    The telephone number is correctly written, but I'm not sure about the others. It might be technically correct, it might not be, but either way those hyphenated numbers look rather silly. I would say avoid doing it like that, but I can't vouch for whether or not there is anything strictly wrong with it.

    Also, just on a side note, do most of the dialogue tags precede the dialogue? I'm pretty sure it's still a valid format, but it does seem rather strange. Most dialogue tags come either during or after the dialogue.
     

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