😀 to speech her own

(Read Part 1 of this series here.)

First: I’m not apologizing for that awful pun in the title. I was cracking dad jokes long before I became an actual dad.

“I know,” he smiled.

This little sentence offended so many people on Threads. To them, it was obviously incorrect and against the rules.

To be fair, they were right. By current standards, you use periods to separate action tags from dialogue.

But here’s the nifty truth about rules and conventions: they evolve.

In a hundred years, the above example could be standard practice across the world, or in the United States, or on Mars, or in certain forms of writing and not others—you get the idea.

When it comes to writing prose for other human beings to read, every single choice you make is governed by one question:

Does it work?

That question breaks down into a bunch of other questions like:

• Does the reader understand my intention? (Hopefully yes.)

• Is the reader distracted from the story by my wording? (Hopefully no.)

• Does this choice fit with the other choices I’ve made in crafting this story? (Hopefully yes.)

And so on.

When my wonderful client Jen posted a reel about this issue, many commenters said the above example—i.e., the “wrong” one—made perfect sense to them. Many others said it bothered them.

Some readers will love your choices. Some won’t.

And as we all know from existing on the Internet, people agreeing with you has virtually nothing to do with how correct you are.

As an editor, my job is to help you impact your readers. I will always advise you to use proper dialogue/action tags, but in other issues (like Oxford commas, sentence fragments, etc.) I may happily suggest you break the rules when it will draw the reader in.

How’s that for nuance?

Next week: a new series!

P.S.—once we reach 100 subscribers, I’ll pick one random subscriber to win 20% off any editing service in the next year. Share this with your author friends!

Want feedback on your dialogue? Reply to this email with an excerpt from one of your scenes and I may use it in a future Bite.

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^{Addison Horner is the chief editor of Avocado Tree Press. Here’s his newsletter. It’s different but still pretty good.}