@ Luna - That sounds reasonable to me. Like I said, I know that deadlines have a mysterious power to focus the mind.

Should I have posted in the forums before editing the wiki? :-P

Welcome to our island home, Zatnik! I trust you weren't too cold on the trip overseas?

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I forgot to say earlier: if it helps, I had never heard the term "graf" before joining this forum, and even then only really recently (like, in the last few months of you guys using it).

Howdy, Zatnik! Deeeee-lighted to have you around!

And, no, anyone can edit the wiki. Keeper is our wiki-guru, though, so he pays close attention to all the various comings and goings.

Anyway, I hope we'll be seeing you around these parts!

@ Lord Luna - Thanks. I'm always curious about these things. When I was growing up, my English teachers tended to take a very informal approach to grammar, and so I didn't learn much terminology beyond the basic core of nouns and verbs and the like. So, when I learned AP style in order to write for newspapers, that really kind of became my baseline understanding for how to think and speak about written English. That was easily over a decade ago at this point, but a lot of the AP style kind of stuck, which leaves me on a strange little island at times, since that method of writing is becoming less and less common as printed papers lose traction.

Anyway, now my prose tends to live in this weird no man's land between AP style and more standard conventions. My serial commas have come back, for instance. But I still feel like I'm committing a little sin any time I use a speech tag other than "said."

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I love "said." "Said" and I go way back. There are lots of ways to make mistakes with speech tags, but good ol' "said" will never do you wrong.

So, it turns out I don't have the ability to sticky threads. I don't think its worth bothering the moderators to do it for us every week unless someone knows whether it's possible to give this account those powers over the voting forum only.

Man, I can't imagine how you get through my dialogs, then. I tend to use a ton of different ones.

On the contrary. This is exactly the sort of service the (fictional) FBI is delighted to provide.

Assuming it gets your thumbs-up, I'd be pleased to sticky said threads.

It actually doesn't bother me when other people do it. The only thing which bothers me is when people use things which aren't speaking as speech tags. Like: "I'm sad," the librarian frowned. You can't frown words. You can say them with a frown. But you can't frown them.

But, for myself, I like "said" about nine times out of ten. Or "asked," sometimes, if it's a question. Anything spicier than that and I start to get nervous. With all the times that Jackie "shouted" or "growled" in her most recent story, I was getting worried that the speech tag police would come bursting through my door at any moment.

Fortunately, I remain at large.

"For now," he said with a frown.

That would be because it's wrong. there are a lot of right ways to do it, but that one is wrong

As you say:


A favorite of mine:


It takes some contorting but it works:



That said and done, I'm one of those people who uses said replacements a decent amount to indicate inflection. I will still just use "said", "asked" and "replied" a lot, but there will be a fair amount of other tags.

What I always worry about is my disastrous overuse of ellipses, especially in dialogue. The number of times a character's line will end with "..." because they're trailing off is far higher than it should be. Sometimes, I'll even end narration/thought that way if the idea is incomplete, which happens more often than you'd think.

I have a thought about that, if I can remember what it is...

I'll occasionally use "laughed," but yeah, "frowned" is right out. Things like "scoffed," "exclaimed," even something like "exploded," are occasionally acceptable. Indicators of volume, like "yelled," "bellowed," "whispered," or "mouthed" also seem fine to me. Pieces of furniture, on the other hand, are not. You typically wouldn't say "What are you doing?" Stefi sofaed. or "Just get out of here!" davenported Anna.

I hate when people do that.

Strangely though, when someone chifferobes, it kind of works sometimes.

That sounds *so* dirty.

Just hope you never have to see it, my young friend.

Oh my God, tablet computing is going to be the death of me.

I just finished typing up a big, long post, when I noticed that there was some gunk on my screen.

"No problem," says I. "I will simply wipe that off!"

Which I do, by performing what is apparently the "go back" touch gesture.

I swore so loud, I was worried I woke up Mrs. OL.

I can sympathize.

I won't, but I could.

The old Raven's back!

I sticky'd this week's active voting threads. That should help keep them where everyone can see them.

Provided it proves to be useful, I can do this on a weekly basis going forward.

Thanks, Agent Cooper. How's everything up at Black Lodge?

Mercifully, after the citizens of Twin Peaks became aware of the note which Laura Palmer left in her diary after Annie appeared to her in a dream and informed her that I would later become trapped in the Black Lodge, Major Briggs led a rescue mission which freed me from that terrible place. I am pleased to once again breathe the fresh mountain air.

It has been difficult to adjust to the way the world has changed while I was trapped, though. For one, this Internet is quite a marvel. Also, it is much harder to buy microcassettes.