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I seem to remember the usage of a kind of soft quotation, with no quote marks, but a capital letter and two spaces after the comma. Has anyone seen this? Does it have a name? Example:

I asked him if it was possible. He gave me a dirty look,  No way.

Hellion
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Matt
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  • There's no such style I know of. 2. ELU editor tool trims consecutive spaces to a single space. So you may have had trouble trying to replicate your example in the body of the question.
    • – Kris May 16 '12 at 20:38
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    How is that an 'indirect' quote? – Kris May 16 '12 at 20:41
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    @Kris On the first part, nothing in modern typesetting demands doubled spaces. Regarding the second, that’s not necessarily true,    but    you   just   have   to    know   how    to      do        it            right. – tchrist May 16 '12 at 20:45
  • @tchrist Which's why I said 'trouble'. – Kris May 16 '12 at 21:07
  • @Kris There are two spaces after the comma in my example. I used HTML special character kung fu, check closely and you'll see. I'm sure I've seen this somewhere, though of course it could be just a quirk of one author. – Matt May 16 '12 at 21:11
  • Pl see my comment reply to tchrist. – Kris May 16 '12 at 21:49
  • @Matt You don’t have to use HTML stuff, just insert the literal character U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE into the text directly. You may have a keyboard shortcut you know how to use, but me I always use *murine snarf-n-barf* for these tasts. – tchrist May 16 '12 at 23:14
  • I've seen this, but I don't think the two spaces matter. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 01:38
  • @Kaiser "I've seen this:" where? how often? seen used or seen prescribed/ suggested? – Kris May 17 '12 at 07:16
  • I've seen it used in certain books, usually when the speech isn't too long or important, and when the paragraph contains non-speech text. Maybe you want to paraphrase an entire conversation without using indirect speech, or maybe you want to describe a character's thoughts. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 07:58
  • @Kaiser, In other words, you think the OP's example is fine and has precedents in literature? – Kris May 17 '12 at 08:18
  • @Kris: Ah, I don't think so, actually. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 08:24
  • OP's question wasn't consistent with his example. In response to his question, it does have precedents. But his example seems a case of comma splicing to me. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 08:25
  • @kaiser This: "usually when the speech isn't too long or important, and when the paragraph contains non-speech text. Maybe you want to paraphrase an entire conversation without using indirect speech, or maybe you want to describe a character's thoughts." is a really good summary of what I recall seeing. Any chance of a specific citation? – Matt May 17 '12 at 13:23
  • @Matt: The description is my own, so I wouldn't be able to give you a citation. And I haven't been able to find out what this style of quotation is called, if anything. But if you want to know if any reputable authors have used it, I would direct you to P. G. Wodehouse, who is generally regarded as something of a master of English. He uses it frequently enough that any book by him you pick up is almost guaranteed to have an instance of this. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 15:11
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    If you want my opinion on how it might have come into existence, I would say it's one of those variant styles of quotation that writers who don't like quotation marks for aesthetic reasons started using. Another example might be the use of the hyphen or pointed brackets, neither of which I care for much. It's easy to use this style of quotation in sentences where the quoted text forms a part of a longer sentence, because these quotations are essentially embedded clauses. It's when the quotation stands alone as a sentence that it's likely to confuse readers. – Kaiser Octavius May 17 '12 at 15:17