wankgate | 163: stealing 40 cakes from the walmart bakery does not warrant life in prison

A dialogue tag is never, ever a complete sentence. It's a part of the sentence that contains the dialogue.

"Only actions in the middle of dialogue." Anon shrugged. "Like this one."

can you use commas instead of full stops or is that incorrect? always wanted to know!

NAYRT, but for this example no, I don't think so. You use commas with dialogue tags, but "anon shrugged" is not a dialogue tag, it's a sentence, with the dialogue being its own sentence. You can't "shrug" a piece of dialogue, that's a physical action not a way of speaking.

nayrt either, but "shrugged" can be used as a synonym for saying something indifferently without physically shrugging. using it that way would be a stylistic choice, and maybe not the best choice, but still one you'll occasionally see. i'd parse the passage on the basis of whether a comma or a period had been used.

if you want the example to be unambiguous, replace "Anon shrugged" with "Anon began to pace."

in that context, it would have been "shrugged off" if they were dismissing somethings instead of simply 'shrugged' though, yes?

No, shrugged is not a synonym for speaking indifferently, it's a physical gesture that expresses indifference. That's not a stylistic choice, that's just using a word or punctuation incorrectly.

in an ideal world, you'd be correct. i didn't say it was good usage, i said it was usage that you'll occasionally see.

163: stealing 40 cakes from the walmart bakery does not warrant life in prison

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