Thanks in advance for your help.
~Chris
P.S. 50,000 words and going strong =D
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 01, 2009).]
That consideration for the reader, in my opinion, overrides the general rules of prose. Numerals for the names could be placed at beginnings of sentences and can be used for short names like 3 as long as they are used consistently. That approach breaks some rules, but the reasons are good. Rules are not absolute. Breaking them at any time carries a cost, though. In this case, ease of reading is a much more important reason for setting a consistent style that varies from The Book.
If you mention their name / number in dialog, it's usually customary to spell it out...for everything else, it's okay to use the numbers.
I would recommend having drastically different numbers if you have more than one character with this name scheme. It'd be particularly hard on the sightreaders who learned to read as if each word were an ideogram and not broken down into letters. (Thank you, modern education.) The abovementioned 4578 and 4536 might be too close for some readers to distinguis the difference.
Also, the way you handle dialog can be different from narration. The narrator should use each character's name while dialog should sound like what each character says. For example:
It was then that she saw the gun. 4536 drew it slowly from his trench coat, leveled at her chest. "What are you doing, thirty six?" she purred. "I thought you loved me!"
Personally, I would tire of reading a story where everyone is called by a number. I don't think it can be done elegantly--unless you make a compromise. If you have twenty charcters each called a variation of a 4 digit code it will make keeping track of them hard.
Besides, what about humanities proclivity for nicknames. WOuldn't 4159 get called 'big nose' if that was how he differed fromt the others?
I follow the wisdom of Stunk et al, who, I am fairly certain say, numbers should be written as words. Numbers as numerals in text seems wrong.
Three o'clock. Four thirty-six in the evening.
The Year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and twelve..
The option is of course to give them all the same first two digits or at least consider ones that are easier. In the example above you have only two numbers linked together (19+12), where as 'four thousand, two hundred and twenty-six' IS UNWIELDY. It is still better to say 'forty-five hundred and twenty-six' or even just 'forty-five-twenty-six'.
If you choose numbers that are single words for the first two digits e.g. 10-20...or 30, 40, 50 etc, then select, if you can others from the same groups you will get a variety. Some people can have three number names to make them standout.
e.g.
Twenty-forty.
Nineteen-sixty-five.
Twelve-thirteen.
Forty-five-fourteen.
Nineteen-seventy.
I think that, as names, text versions of words are preferable as you can capitalise...which will make it work.
Forty-five-fourteen turned and looked at the other prisoners.
"The guards just told me, Twelve-sixteen died while trying to bust out. They shot him in the back as he scaled the fence."
Forty-five-fourteen lifted his chin. "But remember, at least he died doing something he believed in."
Thirty-double-zero looked up, wide-eyed. "But I thought he wasn't going...
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited August 06, 2009).]
So -- let me get verification. I should be writing out numbers that are less than 100, as well as any number which is used at the beginning of a sentence. Is that correct?
What's next, you'll tell me I won't have to use courier anymore?
I don't see any impending change in Courier or any similar monospaced typeface being prefered in standard manuscript format. The spacious nature of monospaced typefaces is simply easier on a weary eye than a proportionally spaced typeface.
Above us, a million stars shone in the heavens like so many tiny diamonds...
or
Above us, 1000,000 stars shone in the heavens like so many tiny diamonds...
OR
It seemed to me like more than a hundred attackers. I guessed at least a thousand soldiers on horseback galloped towards us. My knees shook, but I shouldered my rifle...
It seemed to me like more than a 100 attackers. I guessed at least a 1000 soldiers on horseback galloped towards us. My knees shook, but I shouldered my rifle...
If anyone thinks that the numeral version looks better, well...it's up to you--your choice. I don't.
I think you have to make a choice based on the number you have to write, and the intended effect. I find numerals poke me out of the story a little--they are the language of mathematics not prose.
In spoken word transcripts, 1100 reads eleven hundred. $1100 reads eleven hundred dollars. 1,100 reads one thousand, one hundred. $1,100, one thousand, one hundred dollars. No and in modern number styles unless it's spoken in dialogue, interrogatory, colloquy, or soliloquy. 11:00 reads eleven o'clock. 11 a.m. reads eleven A-M. 11:30 reads eleven-thirty. 1100 reads eleven hundred hours in Zulu time.
Exceptions are the rule.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 06, 2009).]
quote:
Exceptions are the rule.
Is that a rule?
In this instance we aren't talking about numbers--these are used in the text as names. I, therefore think that they should be written as words and capitalised.
(note: whenever I type the word 'capitalised', I give it a capital C--I don't mean to, it just does. The word itself must trigger my little finger to press the shift button--wierd)
Descriptive rules, as in prose, are whatever works, often as exceptions to prescriptive rules.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Descriptive rules allow whatever exceptions persuade most persuasively. Rhetorical schemes as a general principle are grammatical vices applied in such a way that they're persuasive virtues.
One of my favorite schemes is syndetic connections: polysyndeton and asyndeton. Polysyndeton: multiple conjuctions, tends to slow reading pace down. Cormac McCarthy uses polysyndeton for visual descriptions. Asyndeton, absence of conjunctions, tends to increase reading pace. Staccato, short, sharp, snappy pace. Multi-syndetic connections are prescriptively deprecated in formal writing.
If there is one, the only absolute rule for a writer is use what works to best persuasive effect. In rhetorical schemes, and the more exotic tropes, exceptions are the rule.
From the Silva Rhetoricae, Tree of Rhetoric;
Style
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Canons/Style.htm
Figures of Speech, Schemes and Tropes
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/Schemes%20and%20Tropes.htm
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited August 07, 2009).]