Does anyone use hyphens instead of inverted commas/speech marks? I thought this was a weird old-fashioned literary technique but am currently a book written about five years ago, using hyphens instead of speech marks. It feels very strange, as if the characters aren't really speaking at all. What is the point of this device?!
Types of punctuation that were once fashionable are no longer common practise. Such as, semi-colons. Hyphens, brackets and exclamation marks should be used sparingly. I prefer to stick with comma's and fullstops. I will leave hyphens and elipses to an editor.
I so agree! The book is about very middle-class people with very middle-class problems, set a couple of years ago. The author goes right inside the characters' heads, so it's intensely personal...and yet the use of hyphens makes it feel impersonal. I think I'll go and research the author and see if I can find a reason for this because so far, I remain unconvinced by the device, except to say that she's utterly hyphen-mad - I glanced at a page as suggested and honestly, there are hyphens all over the place, not just used as speech marks! I guess it must just be her peculiar style!
My son was in Spanish school for two years and the punctuation was very confusing, but they also use hyphens for speech. In fact, speech follows a colon then a hyphen. (As if we didn't all have enough problems with when to use colons already!) So I would agree it would be a good way to indicate heavy dialects and maybe that is why it was used.
I did a writing course and the tutor (who is a published novelist and ghost) said she used hyphens when there were pauses in speech (where I would usually use ellipses.) I also thought that quite odd. I bought an Oxford Style Manual hoping to clear up all these issues and ended up more confused! I think a lot of it is to do with the author's own style. There are also some publishing houses who chose certain punctuation styles - for instance, whether they use single or double speech marks for speech or thought - but either way it seems a lot of published and well-regarded writers like to push the boundaries of acceptable punctuation. Sometimes it looks, to me, like needless tampering, but I try to remember this. I once heard Bill Bailey complaining about the change in time signature of The Bill. It had gone from it's original very complex time signature (something like 7 8!) to 4 4. The result was that a very edgy sounding theme tune suddenly became really quite pedestrian. The rhythm had made the tune and Bill Bailey's quite clever point was that now the rhythm police had got hold of the show it was difficult to believe anything off-beat or interesting was going to happen when the music finished.
Punctuation can do exactly the same thing to a piece of prose. Take a look at the page again and try reinserting ordinary speech marks. Do they work? If they do, would you read it differently? You already said it feels as if the characters aren't speaking so perhaps that is the intention. Is the rhythm of the lines very unusual and indicated by the unusual punctuation? I always ask myself these sorts of questions when I stumble across something punctuated in a way I wouldn't have chosen. It is always, as you called it, a device, and discovering the author's intention in using it usually adds to your understanding/enjoyment of the text.
However, if my conclusion is that someone has just tried to be clever because they know all the rules and how to bend them, I do find that quite irritating. Unusual punctuation should always add nuances to the story for the reader, not inflation to the ego of the author, don't you think?