Hi, I'm terrible at writing and grammer. I'm a potter trying to write a blog about things that happen in the studio. In the following excerpt I try and write my thoughts during the situation. Should I be using quotation marks like this or italics. I'm also not sure on the use of semi colons. I've used a hyphen which I know is probably wrong. It seems hypens should just be used for connecting words from what I've just read. Could anyone re-write this passage to be grammatically correct please? It was only when I smelt the faint plastic burning smell that I understood the bang must have been something electrical. I was sat in front of my beloved pottery wheel, "please" I thought - "not the wheel!" I hesitantly moved my foot to the pedal and slowly pushed it forward. Nothing happened. It must just need a new fuse; "please let it be the fuse." After changing the fuse I lost all hope.
Well, I would lose the quotes and the thought tags. (Edited because I agree with the below rewrite about the plastic.) It was only when I smelt plastic burning that I understood the bang must have been something electrical. I was sitting in front of my beloved pottery wheel--please, not the wheel! I hesitantly moved my foot to the pedal and slowly pushed it forward. Nothing happened. It must just need a new fuse; please let it just need a new fuse. After changing the fuse I lost all hope.
I've just seen it would be better to say It was only when I smelt plastic burning that I understood the bang must have been something electrical.
My personal druthers are italics for the thought passages, but quotes would work as well. It's really your choice. American usage currently favors quotes, I think, but it's not a hard and fast rule.
Not to be pedantic, but it might be better to use smelled instead of smelt. Smelt can be used as past participle of smell, but it more frequently refers to either refining ore or a type of small fish and could be considered bad grammar depending on who's reading it. Personal preference wins, though.
I don't mind the speech marks for thoughts, its like dialogue with yourself after all. I'd drop the exclamation mark and some of the words It was only when I smelt burning plastic that I understood the bang must have been something electrical. "Please" I thought "not the wheel". I pushed the pedal down. Nothing. "Let it be just the fuse." After changing the fuse, I lost all hope. Incidentally what did go bang ? Pottery wheels are quite basic things. Motor, gear ration pulleys, wheel ... not much scope for electrical explosions .... if it was the motor the smell wouldn't be exactly plastic. I've burnt out a couple of lathe motors and the smell is much more carbony from the brushes.
My preference is italics or the single quote ('). A suggestion I have is to never say "I'm terrible at (blank)." Saying it cements it more into your head. To me, a lot of grammar is recognizing what words mean, and then choosing the correct word. Knowing grammar will tell you that the use of the word 'to' in the first sentence should have been repeated in the second sentence. If you 'try and do' something, you didn't try, you just did.
"Try and..." is pretty normal in some dialects of English, though. I wouldn't include it in something formal, but there are places where it would be just fine.
Chicken is right on both counts. Past tense verbs ending -t rather than -ed are perfectly correct and normal in UK English. Dreamt, smelt, etc. And "try and" is much more common than "try to." @tomhumf doesn't say where he (or his characters) are from, but let's not "correct" perfectly correct English to US English, huh?
This habit of "correcting" perfectly good English reminds me of that time when I thought my colleague had it wrong when she said "scratch paper." I genuinely thought it was a mistake. I'd never heard of "scratch paper" before. In the UK we say "scrap paper". And then I saw "scratch paper" used on WF once and I was like, "Is it possible it might be an American thing??" (my colleague was American, after all) Anyway to echo Tender, the past tense ending of -t is perfectly acceptable, though I think it might be a British English thing. Nothing wrong with "Try and..." either. What the OP should do is decide whether he wants to write in British English, American English or some other form of English, and then stick to the conventions true to that.
Also people aren't perfectly grammatical in thought or speech... so if you want it to b realistic you don't need to write it with perfect grammar either, so log as its clear that the poor grammar is the characters not the authors
@tomhumf Others have covered the grammatical points. However: I disagree. I actually really liked your style. You got the emotion across while keeping it professional sounding. What you wrote actually drew me in even though I have no interest in pottery. I'd say this is a pretty good start to your blog.
Reminds me of another UK/US difference...manually adding up a number of columns, I'll check them by adding them across, as well as down, and then adding the "end column" to check that it comes back to the "cross-cast" from the bottom (total) row. US usage is to "cross-foot" that bottom row; it makes sense, you're adding up the figure at the foot of the column; but I was 50 before I ever heard it.
Never heard of that term either - and I suck at databases and any kind of maths and graphs Hey maths! Another US/UK difference.
Oh! Does this mean that I'm incorrect in saying that "try and" wouldn't work in formal writing? Or just that if I'm depicting a UK speaker, they shouldn't be saying "try to"?
Are there really strict grammatical rules for how one goes about writing internal dialogue? I am 99.99% certain that it is a matter of style... except for that hyphen after, "thought." The two most popular ways seem to be using italics or quotations, but for the latter, you could get away without italics too. "Please," I thought, "not the wheel!" Please, I thought, not the wheel! You can also opt for indirect internal dialogue instead. In my opinion, this would be the better option since there is hardly any significance in directly stating the words being thought. The reader still gets the idea of what is going through the character's mind without the exact words. Although, I might only be saying this because this is my preference most of the time. I sat in front of my beloved pottery wheel, praying that it was not the wheel. You can probably get away with any formatting as long as you can make it logical and easy to understand. The more important thing to keep in mind is to be consistent with the style that you choose to use.
That doesn't make sense as a sentence since the 'it' refers to the preceding noun in this case the wheel ... so he sat in front of the wheel praying the the wheel wasnt the wheel... "I sat in front of my beloved potters wheel praying that it wasn't broken" I have to say also on a potters blog , its redundant to say the wheel is beloved (unless you have more than one and this particular one is your favourite) because we already know you love pottery ... on account of how you're a potter and blogging about it. This would be different if it was a novel and you were introducing a character who likes to pot.
I was too lazy to correct the wording since I was aiming for the TC to understand the point, rather than use that exact example.
I've never snuck a "try and" past an editor, though it is probably more idiomatic than "try to." It's one of my pet peeves... using two action verbs when one should be an infinitive. One of the few things I get pedantic about. ETA: "Smelt" means to extract metal from ore (like with a smelter) so I try not to use it in place of "smelled," though I often miss it. Apparently it's far more commonplace to use it as the past tense of "smell" in the UK, which I find fascinating.
Not if you're writing dialogue for me, @ChickenFreak ! ETA: "Smelt" means to extract metal from ore (like with a smelter) so I try not to use it in place of "smelled," though I often miss it. Apparently it's far more commonplace to use it as the past tense of "smell" in the UK, which I find fascinating. Have you ever smelt the smell when you smelt some metal? There's a French quirk...Je suis ce que je suis, mais je ne suis pa ce que je suis = I am what I am, but I am not what I follow...so don't just blame the UK for quirks!
Steer clear of saying "smelt a smell", "viewed a view" or "tasted a taste" Also, even though your piece has been corrected above, when using a string of adjectives such as, "faint", "burning" and "big" use commas (eg. "A long, fat snake" , not "A long fat snake".)
Yes, in the UK "try and" would be fine in formal writing. We use it far more than "try to" and it isn't considered incorrect. A UK speaker *could* say try to, though. It isn't outlandish, just less common than try and.
