Formatting of the a novel dialogue

[Dadoche]

I have recently reformated my dialogues for my novel Fantasia. As a french kid, all the books I have ever read had underscores to indicate that a character was speaking. After a few feedbacks from fellow authors in the community I found out that it can be confusing for some of you so I changed it. I was just wondering something if someone knew the answer : is there anything reason why some languages use underscores and others quotation marks ?

[AliceTuinz]

In my language we have a big em dash to mark dialogue so that's fun. But I actually have a bachelor's degree in linguistics, I actually love seeing these little quirks in other people's writings.

[mohammed_kirito]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[dimsum_y]

I'm not sure why, but in American English (what I grew up with), most character dialogues are surrounded by double quotation marks " " whereas I've read that in British English, theirs is surrounded by single quotation marks ' '. I can only think that every country either follows an already established system or establishes their own, whichever they think suits them best via cultural conventions and communication styles.

[GiveMeThatBread]

Don't spam with promo in other posts. It's kinda annoying

[GiveMeThatBread]

Could be a number of reasons!

-publishing traditions
-historical preferences
-writing evolution

For Tapas specifically, being a North American website, you will see the double quotations marks as that is the standard here.

[moontokkym]

Lol hi Danaël, as someone in the official légendaires discord, your pfp was funny to see
Not sure about the actual reason, but French is generally an outlier in the world of dialogue syntaxe, as most languages I'm aware of use some form of guillements exclusively, be it "this", 'this', ﹂this (Japanese)﹁, «this» or „this“. I've rarely seen the dash system or anything that doesn't encase the dialogue outside of French.

[cherrystark]

Generally, I would recommend formatting your dialogue in a standard English style if you plan to publish in English. Most people, even if English isn't their first language, can easily recognize dialogue

[Dadoche]

Lol, I was not expecting anyone to have the reference here ! Is there an english version of les légendaires or are you just french ?

[Dadoche]

Nervermind I'm dumb, you literally have France in your bio :

Toujours sympa de voir d'autres français !

[moontokkym]

I'm british, I've just lived in France for nearly 20 years, i started drawing because of Les Légendaires and I've been an active member of the official fandom since 2017. If you've been on the website before the mass exodus caused by the shitty "update" in 2022, or on the official discord server, you might know me as K9-Tales.