🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Nov22.230654.45607@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> randal@pylon.physics.colostate.edu (randal rheinheimer) writes:
>I've come across a problem in my all-too-amateurish writing and am asking those  
>more experienced (or just more imaginative) for help.  There is a certain flow  
>I wish to maintain in putting a thought or a description inside a spoken  
>sentence, but no particular construction seems right to me.  Here is an example  
>of the sort of thing I'm working with:
>
>She said, "I'm posting you about my problem--" Her hands became clumsy on the  
>keyboard. "--and I hope you're able to help me."
>
>That's the best construction I had come up with, so I knew that it was past  
>time to get help; it's just not right to put a complete sentence in the middle  
>of the spoken phrase.  Possibly the dashes could be placed outside the  
>quotation marks:
>
> . . problem," --her hands became clumsy on the keyboard-- "and . . .
>
>A large part of the problem is that the flow, the feel of the passage is  
>destroyed if I put the description somewhere more convenient.  Any  
>ideas--parentheses, maybe?

What about just interposing a phrase, more like an image, to give the reader
the effect of a glance:

     She said, "I'm posting you about my problem--" (clumsy hands fumbled the
keys) "--and I hope you're able to help me".

Hmmm...doesn't look as good on the screen as I had hoped.  Maybe use your
first version, with a few small changes:

     She said, "I'm posting you about this problem" - her hands became clumsy
on the keyboard - "and I hope you're able to help me".  

This is a bit better at creating the speech embedded in a sentence feeling,
rather than the more awkward interposed phrase.  Opinions?

	David Pipes