Quotation Marks?

[Venusian Broon]

If asterisks were used solely for radio communications, would you personally find it confusing? Would an agent/editor/publisher reject it outright?

Thanks.

Yes it does depend on context, although my guess though is that you'd really be tagging them just like quotation marks, so why not just use quotation marks?

But possibly it would work fine. I haven't seen it in practice so really I don't know

However, thinking worst case scenario (and I should make it clear I've never been on the publishing side of this business at all*, so purely a opinion):

A stressed manuscript reader, working their way through the endless in-pile of submissions, might pick up yours flick through it and find pages of asterisks, quickly say Woa! Incorrect/Non-standard punctuation, then think: 'this suggests that this writer either has other weird issues all the way through the manuscript or perhaps doesn't understand punctuation. Probable massive hassle.' And instantly without even a cursory look at your content (which may be perfect otherwise, including your radio com dialogue), your manuscript gets sent to the reject pile.

I have no idea how likely such a worst case as described might be. Do you want to take the risk?

But if you are only ever going to self publish then hey, what the hell!

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* The closest experience I've had of this is having to choose candidates from a pile of a good couple of thousand CV's - and believe me when faced with such a mountain of information and only so many hours in the day, in the first cut you automatically cull for the smallest of reasons: weird paper, spotting an obvious spelling mistakes, if it is a junior position for graduates and no experience is required then only pick those with firsts or two-ones (and if that still produces a huge pile, then just throw out the two-ones...) etc...

 

[Venusian Broon]

MatterSack: have a look at the sticky in Writing resources entitled 'How to avoid the slushpile'. I think it has relevance for this discussion.

 

[Jimmo Jam]

I think it's just up to personal preference.

 

[chrispenycate]

Ah, but whose personal preference? I had a version of Word in an Office for Mac bought in a French speaking country whose preference for guillemets «like that» over inverted commas “like this” could never be adequately beaten out of it. It would accept the correction for one document, then revert to what it knew was right on the next new project.

If you are intending to sell the work, unfortunately it's the publisher's opinion that outweighs the author's (for one of my stories I wanted to change fonts for different characters, to indicate their different modes of communication, and was informed this was not on the cards at all) and the paying public's opinion is never requested.

 

[Kylara]

That bugs me no end in the couple of french books I own. It annoys the hell out of me and I still can't work out why. «Shifty shifty creepy creepy»

 

[tinkerdan]

This one is more likely an issue with the interior design people and production issues.

If you are intending to sell the work, unfortunately it's the publisher's opinion that outweighs the author's (for one of my stories I wanted to change fonts for different characters, to indicate their different modes of communication, and was informed this was not on the cards at all) and the paying public's opinion is never requested.

Changing fonts on the fly is not that cost effective.

 

[BelgarionOz]

I'm another Aussie writer and i was always taught that you use double (") for dialogue. Single ones were mean to be used when you're quote something that you aren't actually quoting (as in reiterating a common saying or something, so it stands out), or it is the thoughts of a character (eg- 'Well you aren't going to have that happen, Sally', Fred thought to himself. Out loud he said, "Sure Sally, no problem at all.").

I've seen both sorts used, and not really noticed that single seemed to be a UK usage. In fact on just a random inspection of my shelves a moment ago, I've got American books printed with both and UK books printed with both.

So who knows.