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bracketed comment embedded in speech flow

 
 
Reply Mon 21 Nov, 2005 05:11 pm
I need pointers or references to help me confidently deal with cases of comments, explanations, etc. inserted WITHIN utterances by characters in a story AND encased in parentheses and or brackets. I know the basic construction of speech sentences already. I am uncertain that the same rules apply in this case.
Eg. are there cases where the inverted commas for speech should NOT terminate a partial utterance and restart for the remainder of the spoken sentence/paragraph after an 'aside' or a descriptive insertion? Does the rule vary between short and lengthy asides when the comment is (and needs to be) in parentheses, or if the embedded 'aside' is deemed to need 'square brackets', etc. I refer to those cases where, in my view, it would be less effective to have the unspoken comment, the 'aside', either before or after what the character has to say, rather than embedded within it, and plain ancillary comment within a spoken sentence is not deemed appropriate. I see nothing relating to this on the web (the Ryerson site, for instance).
In a nutshell, does a bracketed comment within a speech-flow obviate the need for a closing then reopening of the speech marks?
Can you help, or point me to a reliable source - a free source that is, fore I am ann impoverrishd wrieter as you mayy have geussed.
crud
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roger
 
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Reply Mon 21 Nov, 2005 09:05 pm
The bracketed comment or word is just something inserted for clarity - not actually a part of the quoted material, so it has no effect on the quotation marks at all.
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Merry Andrew
 
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Reply Mon 21 Nov, 2005 09:22 pm
Let me understand, first, what you are asking. Are you referring to the insertion of parentheses or square brackets into dialogue, i.e. a person's spoken words? Is this what you're talking about:

John said,"But I wasn't there (I lie a lot, but this is true) so I don't know the answer."

Is it this wort of construction you have in mind? If it is, that's very poor writing, because people don't actually talk that way. You could reconstruct the sentence like this:

John said, "But I wasn't there. I lie a lot, but this is true. I don't know the answer."

But maybe that's not what you mean. I find it hard to understand what you're asking.
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Mon 21 Nov, 2005 09:47 pm
Me too, Merry.

crudshoveller, maybe you can post an example of what you have in mind, and we can opine as to whether it's correct or not.
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roger
 
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Reply Mon 21 Nov, 2005 10:13 pm
Dear Yahoo!:
Why do journalists [put] words in [brackets] when writing an [article] that contains an [interview]?
Joe
Delaware County, Pennsylvania

Dear Joe:
Journalists use brackets within quotations to put words in people's mouths. This isn't necessarily a bad thing! Sometimes journalists have to insert words to help to clarify a statement.
Brackets are often used to identify ambiguous pronouns in a direct quotation. For example: "They [the 8th Federal Infantry] fought bravely under the most adverse circumstances during the Civil War."

You can also use brackets to properly place a quote within the syntax of a sentence. To decapitalize a word, for example, "Doctor Fielding's written opinion states that '[p]atients are often deceitful.'"

Square brackets are also used in conjunction with the "[sic]" punctuation, which is a way of distancing yourself from a misstatement or a misspelling. For example, "The Delaware River is indeed a truly majestic site [sic]."

Finally, to quote usage guru Bryan Garner (and conveniently use square brackets in the process), "[Square brackets] enclose comments, corrections, explanations, interpolations, notes, or translations that were not in the original text but have been added by subsequent authors, editors, or others."
Source
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