I've been doing some more transcription work over the last three days, which always gives me a little something to gripe about - my headphones pinch after an hour or two - and after listening to several hours of conversations, I must admit that I'm surprised afresh at how normal, unscripted speech looks virtually nothing like written dialogue.
For starters, we talk in run-ons. Horribly long, convoluted run-ons that may change theme two or three times before they reach a logical end. We speak with no regard for commas or semicolons, we repeat ourselves, and we have a tendency to let our sentences trail off when we can't think of an appropriate conclusion. Also, it's amazing how much filler we put into our speech (um, you know, like, I guess, uh...yeah), regardless of our age or educational level. We're thinking on our feet, so we have to fill the air while we stall for time.
The other thing that struck me is how it's virtually impossible to convey the aural nuances of conversation in a typed document. Text reads as a horizonal line, but voices rise and fall, crescendo and decrescendo, pause, reapeat, and stutter, and the use of italics conveys only a fraction of this. In some respects, it might be more appropriate to score conversations, just get out the staff-ruled paper and have a go. The tempo changes might be a bit on the abrupt side, but hey, that's what the avant-garde is all about, isn't it? You know?
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