(August 18, 2016 at 12:59 am)wiploc Wrote: Hijack okay? Since this grammar thread seems to have run its course but for the wisecracking, I just wrote this:
Quote:Salt, and the sound of surf; I was near the ocean or some big lake. Cold dark and silent; it was night, well before dawn, before the morning birds riot. The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood (I assumed it was mine), and urine (also mine?).
And I'm wondering about the punctuation at the end. "?)." I never saw that before. Can anybody tell me whether it's good or bad, and what to do about it if it's bad?
Having asked the question, I'll now try to answer it myself:
If it's bad, then I have to recast the sentence somehow to avoid the problem. But if it's good it's distracting. That is, a lot of people will assume it is bad, and I should avoid causing them to have distracting thoughts about grammar when I want them to be involved in the story. So I should recast the sentence to avoid inciting misguided grammarians. Conclusion: Either way, I should recast.
But I'm still curious: Is it actually wrong?
In story form writing the parentheses are not a usual thing. Most writers use italics for thoughts or comas. Such as; "The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood, which I assumed was mine, and urine, this also might have been mine." You didn't finish the sentence, you said the smell and mentioned them but you didn't have a verb. The smell suffocated the character? Nauseated him? Floated all around? I personally would say something like:
"The smell of damp soil, predator scat, evergreens, blood, that I assume is mine, and urine, this one I don't know if I can claim as my own, all hit me at once." or "... claim as my own, choked me." or "battered my senses."
“What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it's supposed to be.”
Also if your signature makes my scrolling mess up "you're tacky and I hate you."
Also if your signature makes my scrolling mess up "you're tacky and I hate you."
