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What can satisfy your appetite?

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Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

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I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!

(save the images to zoom in on the pics)

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The neurodivergent urge to do this

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I hate that SEPTember OCTOber NOVember and DECember aren’t the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months.

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the suffering never ends

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The Truman Show must've been so boring if you were in the wrong timezone. All the Americans would be like "wow look at his day to day activities" and the Australians just get a live feed of Truman sleeping.

The memes woulda been like "when you tune into The Truman Show but he's just sleeping again:

Like???? Imagine waking up the next morning and finding out you slept through Truman escaping

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If this doesn't SCREAM actor AU idk what does

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Idc if he's a normal person in this au he has to suffer at least slightly

Also buff Russian Anya be upon ye

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more forgivable version of jimjam

femcel queen

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SHIT dude

i need everyone to understand the poetry of curly turning a blind eye to anya’s suffering only to be robbed of his autonomy and voice as she was and then forced to observe jimmy’s crimes and the abuse of his own body

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always everyone else’s fault

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something about mouthwashing that has always bothered me is the cake-baking scene. where the game’s dialogue is usually very realistic, this scene feels… weird. the dialogue is unnatural and too video-gamey. anya, swansea, and jimmy are telling curly things he should already know for the player’s benefit, such as the backstory for the communal birthday parties and how to bake the cake. it’s strange. but i think i’ve finally figured it out!

We start with Daisuke. “Look at your face!” suggests that Curly’s reaction to being surprise-birthday’d was an expression of shock. This is supported by Jimmy later apologizing to Curly for jumping him like that.

Back to the present. Curly, who tends to use fewer filler words comparatively, uses the word “uh” twice in two lines. “Uh. Wow,” followed by:

I wanna talk about this question for a minute. Let’s look at the scene. Curly can see the birthday party decorations from his position. Curly knows the approximate date off the top of his head, according to the dead pixel scene, so he should know it’s around his birthday. Curly has also undoubtedly experienced many Pony Express birthday parties before. All this to say, why the hell is he asking what the occasion is? It should be pretty obvious, no?

The answer is dissociation.

We know from Curly’s POV introduction that he spaces out in conversation, and that Anya is aware of this. This lasts to the point where he’s staring off at nothing until Anya asks if he’s listening.

He also appears to dissociate during his conversation with Jimmy before the crash: he stops talking completely until prompted by Jimmy to respond and doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening (Jimmy tells him everyone on the ship should die and Curly seemingly agrees, only to very clearly be upset and in shock when Jimmy goes and makes this happen).

Now, Jimmy, Anya, and Swansea have known Curly for years. Seems pretty reasonable that they would be able to recognize signs of his dissociation, yeah? And they do.

Again, these are things that Curly should absolutely know. I believe Anya and Jimmy saw the facial expression that Daisuke referred to and noticed Curly’s inexplicable confusion and realized he was dissociating. They then informed him of the details of the situation while posing it as a question, likely in an attempt to ground him. Anya ends her information with “right?” while Jimmy ends his with “remember?” This allows them to give Curly the information he isn’t grasping in a gentle way that doesn’t call attention to the fact that this is something he should already know.

Anya then gives him more direct instruction by telling him where the cake recipe is (again, a thing he should absolutely know considering he eats in that kitchen every day) and lightly tells him to go make it. She’s guiding him to a task that he would ordinarily be able to complete on his own because she can tell that he’s unsure and out of it.

Swansea—who, while not as close to Curly as Jimmy and not as attentive to the crew’s mental wellbeing as Anya, has known the captain for years— does the same thing, more directly. He asks Curly about the cake recipe and tells him where to find the ingredients and recipe. Again, Curly should absolutely know this already, but for some reason he isn’t doing it on his own.

From the crew’s perspective, if you as Curly choose to engage in this optional dialogue, Anya and Jimmy told Curly to go make the cake, and instead of doing that Curly wandered quietly around the lounge. Brought on, probably, by this dissociative episode. So Swansea reminds Curly what he’s supposed to be doing and where to go to do it.

(While Jimmy and Anya are consistently shown to be in tune to Curly’s emotions (Jimmy moreso pre-crash), Swansea typically is not; however, he’s standing near Anya during this segment, meaning she had the opportunity to tell him what she’d noticed.)

Now, an interesting thing about Curly’s optional conversations with the rest of the crew here: He doesn’t say anything during them. This is a little odd, considering Curly is a fairly social character. He does have other optional interactions where he doesn’t respond, but those are typically after he’s just had a back-and-forth with the other person or where you’re able to respond nonverbally (such as closing/opening the door to Utility when Jimmy jokes about it). But for the most part, Curly does respond to what others say.

Not here, though. He can drift between Daisuke, Anya and Swansea, and Jimmy, but he doesn’t say a word apart from when Jimmy notices his silence and prompts him to speak.

Even then, he just agrees with Jimmy without any indication that he processed what Jimmy said. If you go for Jimmy’s second optional dialogue, Curly once again has no response.

All this to say—

This post was not made to demonstrate any overarching story element. Honestly, I kinda thought I was stringing conclusions together. But now that it’s all down? It… kinda makes sense. This is consistent with Curly’s character, with Anya’s and Jimmy’s dynamics with Curly, and with the typically excellent, human, non-meta dialogue Mouthwashing utilizes in all other scenes.

It works down to the little details, such as Daisuke being the only one who doesn’t have weird dialogue here; he’s only known Curly a few months and is probably less in tune to the captain’s mannerisms. (Plus the crew tends not to tell him about anything serious.) Furthermore, dissociation can be caused by stress, and Curly is VERY stressed in this scene, preoccupied as he is with needing to tell the crew about the termination. His flavor text during this scene demonstrates that pretty well; his flavor text is much more cynical than his norm and often leads to him thinking about the termination rather than what he’s supposed to be doing.

Is there a possibility that I’m completely wrong? Of course. But I finally have a plausible explanation for something that has been bugging me for months, so I’m satisfied.

hope you enjoyed today’s episode of MOUTHWASHING THEORY TO FILL A PLOT HOLE THAT NO ONE EXCEPT MY PEDANTIC ASS THINKS ABOUT <3

If I said anything wrong re: dissociation or if you have another Watsonian explanation for why this scene is written so oddly, please do feel free to share!

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love you man (*cue bro fist bump*)

@justapotato89 this deserves a whole post because HOLY SHIT THE HASHTAGS?????

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Beer gives you a strange power over yourself- an illusion of control wrapped in the glass bottle you sip from. The label of alcohol sits heavy like a seal pressed into wax, a quiet badge of adulthood, often a mark of something stronger than it is. But the 7% does nothing. It lingers, barely touching you, a whisper of recklessness diluted in amber. It gives you power and yet it slips through your fingers.. a placebo of rebellion. A soft edge to a sharper world. You sit with it as the bottle sweats in your palm while you wish you were a different person- someone looser, louder, different and perhaps unbothered. But the alcohol does nothing to you, you're just yourself, unchanged, watching the foam settle back into a cold nothing. The first sip is a promise and the second, a confirmation. The third, a quiet knowing that nothing really will change, and yet your headache disappears. Your migraines fade away. The label tells you you're in control, but you realize the control was always there. You let the bottle tip against your lips like it holds something more than it does. It never does.

And still, you drink. You drink because it's something to hold and something to sip. Something to mark the passing of time, and something that ends your misery when you don't know how to. Because even diluted, power feels like something.