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i love popping into random conversations i overhear my friends having at The Function. embodying a malware ad, i crop up; poised and ready to strike. except, no hot singles near you; only barely-contained glee at having derailed the conversation and liberal use of hand gestures.

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tamest lesbian experience; absolute casuals. just you wait until lvl 5 Lesbianism (abolishing the 7 layers of hell and making Dante do a funny little dance). i completed this by the second date btw

lesbian goes apeshit to bring girlfriend back from the dead. the wedding is still on.

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here is period cramps kabru

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thank you @sarahk-15 for this birthday gift; words cannot capture the shock and awe i felt upon seeing this in my inbox at 7am. godbless

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we do need to revisit the wording of "you can't have your cake and eat it too" because i don't think it clearly enough conveys that it's more that you can't simultaneously retain a cake and also get to consume it (which would render you cakeless). for years i was like But why not....it's my cake....?

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ppl who oppose gender affirming care for kids are nuts like the extent of medical intervention for trans kids is maybe puberty blockers but they’ll still be like “SO UR SAYING WE SHOULD LET TODDLERS HAVE TOP SURGERY???????” barbara toddlers do not have a top to surgery

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god i'm so thirsty. do you mind? [latches onto your carotid artery]

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"or so i'm told" i say, fists clenched, having receiving some stares after spouting the most incoherent misinformation ever spewed from between two lips.

this has nothing to do with this post. in fact, little souls of victorian men are wont to swirl not only in rivers, but in shallow puddles too. i am using this as a mouthpiece for my rambling. misinformers RISE UP

If you're ever by a stream with a lot of trout, keep your eyes open for the little souls of Victorian businessmen that swirl about in there. You see, they didn't have enough fun in life, so this is how they make up for it. Or so I'm told.

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anybody want to develop a really tight-knit friendship in which we have very similar interests and we do everything together and eventually it spirals into vague homoerotiscism and i (me) get confused and the friendship wavers, but the remainder of the bond stays alight in our souls until the end of our days? or is that wishful thinking.

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marcille being a react andy is my favourite part of dungeon meshi

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Once again recommending donations to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. Not only is it a credible organization, you can donate any amount, so even if you don’t have much money, you can still contribute what you can towards humanitarian aid in Gaza. It takes donations via credit, PayPal, and mailed checks.

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I have been revisiting my old fics from lockdown, and I think my little 14 year old brain was fried by endless nights spent hunkered beneath covers with his eyes glued to episodes of JJBA; They're barely coherent. The speakers act as though punctuation is a whim to be considered and dismissed in one breath.

So, thanks to this post I have been editing them. Completely unrelated, but they still make no sense even with correct dialogue punctuation.

a guide to formatting dialogue (it's harder than you'd think!)

a request from instagram that i'm posting here. buckle up, because this is a long one!

if a spoken sentence ends in a period, don’t use a dialogue tag. either replace the period with a comma or replace the dialogue tag with a separate sentence indicating a related action or description.

incorrect: “I need to go.” he said.

even more incorrect: “I need to go.” He said.

correct: “I need to go,” he said. or “I need to go.” He pushed back his chair and stood.

this rule does not apply to other types of punctuation such as question marks or exclamation points.

leave the dialogue tag lowercase, no matter what. (proper nouns remain capitalized)

incorrect: “When are we leaving?” She asked. ("She asked" is not a complete sentence)

correct: “When are we leaving?” she asked. (the line of dialogue is included in the complete sentence)

when formatting dialogue, you can add natural pauses by breaking up a spoken line with a dialogue tag or an action.

correct: “Wait,” they said. “I feel like this is getting overly complicated.” (within the lines of dialogue, ‘wait’ is its own sentence, so you use a period after ‘they said.’ you can remove the dialogue tag and it would be written like this: “Wait. I feel like this is getting overly complicated.”)

also correct: “I’m running out of sentence ideas,” they muttered, shifting in place, “but writing doesn’t sleep and neither do I.” (if you wrote the dialogue without the tag and action, it would look like this: “I’m running out of sentence ideas, but writing doesn’t sleep and neither do I.” adding the dialogue tag lengthens the natural pause created by the comma. also it’s 3am while i’m writing this. “go to sleep,” you say. to which i say, “did you not read my example sentence?”)

still correct i think (probably but english grammar is a total bitch): “I am going to stop now—” Here, she began rummaging through her bag, before producing a slender vial filled with shimmering liquid, “—and show you something of great importance.” (if you removed the interrupting action, the sentence would be written like this: “I am going to stop now and show you something of great importance.” there is no comma, so the pause being added is for effect, rather than for grammatical purposes. use an em dash (two hyphens, formats like: —) or ellipses (...). additionally, the action is its own separate sentence, rather than being attached to the dialogue as a tag, so it is capitalized.)

an additional note on em dashes: if they are used in a sentence, be it for an interjection, an interruption, a pause, or a secret fourth thing, there is no space before or after the dash. here’s an example from my wip: “Now, though—and overnight, it seemed—the two were acting as a unit, leaving her on the outside.”

if, for whatever reason, a character is speaking in paragraphs, the formatting gets a bit wonky.

“This is going to be the shortest example paragraph ever, but here goes. I am going to write three sentences so this qualifies as a paragraph. Two sentences might also qualify, but I am nothing if not committed to the bit. “New paragraph,” she continued, “same speaker. Wow, look, I incorporated an earlier concept to demonstrate it in a different context. How cool is that? You should totally follow whoever is posting such great writing advice.”

there is no end quote after the first paragraph, but there is a start quote at the beginning of the second paragraph. the end quote comes whenever the speaker is finished. why? i have no idea; i didn’t invent the english language, i just work here.

you can use colons and semicolons in dialogue. it gets a bit awkward, but we’ve just covered paragraph formatting, so how hard can it be?

correct: He asked: “What on earth are you talking about?” (colon in place of a comma when a dialogue tag is placed before the dialogue)

also correct: They said, “It’s getting late, isn't it?” (comma when a dialogue tag is placed before the dialogue)

incorrect: “What on earth are you talking about?”: he asked. (the question mark functions as a comma and eliminates the need for a colon. also, as a rule of thumb, the ending punctuation does not get placed outside of the quotation marks)

still incorrect: He asked; “What on earth are you talking about?” (use a comma)

you can also use colons and semicolons within lines of dialogue (as you would in a normal sentence)

stylistic choices

you do not have to use quotation marks in dialogue, but whatever you choose to do, do it consistently.

For example, some writers format their dialogue in italics, they said. But grammatical and punctuation rules still apply.

Others don’t use italics and just hope people can spot the dialogue or action tags, she supplied. This can get a bit confusing, but I think that’s the point.

— Some use dashes to indicate the start of a line of dialogue, and, of course, the standard varies from place to place and language to language.

‘Still more use single quotes,’ he offered, ‘though I’m not sure why. Maybe it looks better.’

that's it for now! really, you could probably write a book on this topic alone, and cover every minute detail of grammar within dialogue (how would one format an interrobang, i wonder?), but here's a kind-of-basic-but-still-dense guide :)

buy me a ko-fi | what's the deal with radio apocalypse?

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I'm sorry I keep posting my tiktok comments but please. What does this mean. What do people THINK shipping is for anymore???

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i fmuckninh lmove radioheand mmmmmsmms

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Now teach the machine about sin

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