'The only predicatable thing in a life with Nate was the timing of his dawn chorus,' I say to Fy. I smile at the memory of Nate turning cartwheels round the bedroom, whilst belting out his final out of tune note. He always followed it up by dragging me out of bed, saying, 'Come on you miserable old fart, you don't want to miss the best bit of the day.' His grin would be infectious, and I would usually join in with the next song.
I find the transition (or lack of) between 'I say...' and 'I smile...' a bit jagged, though. 'The only predictable thing in a life with Nate was the timing of his dawn chorus,' I say to Fy. The image of Nate turning cartwheels round the bedroom whilst belting out his final out-of-tune note overwhelmed me for a moment. The memories were still so clear! He always followed up the gymnastics by dragging me out of bed, saying, 'Come on you miserable old fart, you don't want to miss the best bit of the day.' His grin would usually make me join in with the next song. Note: sorry to be picky, but I didn't care for the repeated 'would', and the 'it' looks funny referring to the cartwheels AND the song IMO. P.S. You can tell from the emoting I've added that I'm nearing the end of the latest M&B, I think. Sorry!
lol thats ok the would's need changing. However I think in the wider context 'it' is fine as 'it' is the dawn chorus, the cartwheels and singing are a part of that. May change it yet. I do a lot of writing alongside romance writers, their deadlines help me. Have to be careful i don't let too much of it seep in.
that wouldn't be correct in the us, where the single is used only for a quote within a quote and all else takes the double...
I know it isn't correct in the US, but I was agreeing with digitig that in the UK it doesn't seem to be a set rule.
Have a look at the UK-published books on your shelf and see whether that's true. I did, and it didn't seem to be. Of course, that could be creeping Americanism.
Just have. The two books I have at hand are Ian Rankin's Mortal Causes published by Orion in 1994/1995/2005 and John Burke's Stalking Widow published by Robert Hale London in 2000. Both books use single quotation marks for dialogue. After a quick look I could not find any dialogue within dialogue but if there is any there I feel sure it will have double quotation marks. I don't see how you can say it could be creeping Americanism - for the US the opposite is the rule?
In the UK the rules are slightly flexible because there are isn't one recognised bible on punctuation rules. British people generally agonise less over this in any case--we don't have 'English 101' at British unis, where students are guided into academic writing in a particular, standard way (don't know if this is good or bad--I certainly didn't need it, I'd been writing academic essays from about the age of 12). Authors just follow the rules used by the institution/publisher. Generally speaking, for e.g. submitting theses, and for most UK-published academic journals, the rule is: Short quotations should be enclosed in single inverted commas, apart from quotations within quotations (or speech), when double inverted commas are used. Quotations longer than about 5 lines do not have inverted commas at all. They are placed as an indented block in the text. (source: e.g. you can look up Cambridge University website). It's due to this that it seems as though in the UK both single and double (or even no) inverted commas (quotation/speech marks) are seen. BTW, Oxford University just says 'use quotation marks'--it doesn't even bother to specify double or single. At The Observer newspaper, we followed the punctuation guidelines of The Economist magazine, for what it's worth.
That is what has been cited here as the UK rule, but the opposite -- the American "rule" is also often seen; that's what I suggest could be a "creeping Americanism" (although I doubt it -- I think it's just that we don't have a rule). I've just got back from the SFX weekender (where I had a couple of beers with Robert Rankin -- I was sharing accommodation with the guy who introduced him to his wife) where I picked up three books: Gary Gibson's Stealing Light, published by Tor in 2007: Single quotes. Various, The Sleepless Sands, published by Earlyworks Press in 2006: Double quotes. Robert Rankin, Necrophenia, published by Gollancz in 2008, single quotes I also have to hand: Steig Larsson, The Girl who Played with Fire, MacLehose Press, 2006, double quotes Simon Morden, Brilliant Things, Subway Press, 2004, double quotes Athol Fugard, Tsotsi, Canongate Books, 2009, single quotes Do you see why I think that any idea that there's a "rule" for this in UK English is a little optimistic?
Yes, they all were. We don't seem to go for rules in the UK as much as you do in the USA -- just call us the Land of the Free (at least as far as creative writing is concerned).
