Dialogue Tags AFTER the Dialogue?

Hello, I am sorry if this has been asked before, but I’ve been looking for a few days and have been unable to find this information anywhere.

All I want to do is write this line:

“Are you certain?” she clarified.

Yet I am completely unable to get this to work.

I can get this to work:

say “She clarified, ‘Are you certain?’” ;

But I have an entire scene written out, and completely changing the dialogue tags really messes with the pace and the way it is supposed to be read. I’ve searched the help files, I’ve read documentation for a few extensions, and none of them seem to address this simple feature. Which tells me either it is blatantly obvious and I missed it, or I am the first individual in 40 years to want to write dialogue like this.

Something tells me I’m just missing something obvious.

Is there something keeping you from writing

say "'Are you certain?' she clarified."
?

Use apostrophes inside of quotation marks, and Inform 7 outputs them as quotation marks. Bracket them if you don’t want them to be quotes in a nonstandard word Inform doesn’t recognize

say "Y[']all [']re goin[']?' she asked."
Or is the problem more complicated?

Thank you for the response.

I copied and pasted what you wrote and Inform gave me this response:

"'Are you certain?' she clarified."'  , I can't find a verb that I know how to deal with.

Well, have you put the say phrase inside some sort of rule? Inform won’t understand it otherwise. E.g.

Instead of jumping: say "'Are you certain?' she clarified."

You’ll need to post more of your code if you want better targetted advice.

I understand, sorry about that, I’m still getting used to the way Inform processes code.

Here is a sample of the beginning, I have quite a bit more dialogue, however I just have the first part here to test what I have written. Once I get this to work, I plan to add the rest.

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:
	 center "[story title]";
	 center "by [story author]";
	 leave space;
	 center "Press SPACE to begin.";
	 wait for the SPACE key;
	 leave space;
	clear the screen.	
say "'Are you certain?' she clarified.";
	 wait for the SPACE key;
	 leave space;
	clear the screen.	

To leave space:
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break.

Here is what Inform says when I try to run this. I have it running under the Z-Code version.

I’ve experimented with removing the semicolon, but I’m not sure when to include one, when not to include one… So in general, I just keep tweaking things until it finally works.

Ah, that’s because you ended the line before it with a period. That basically marks the end of the rule, so everything after it is no longer part of a rule. I mess this up all the time :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank you!

I have some experience with scripting in the past that was more… mathematical… With Inform, it has been routine thus far for me to spend 8 hours trying to locate the correct syntax for a command to avoid the troubleshooting error, as I’m certain I’m structuring the commands wrong like most programming errors… Only to find out that it’s structured like a sentence… and you have to put a period in the right place… like a sentence.

:smiley:

Just for anyone googling this forum post 4 years from now, here is what I ended up doing based off these recommendations:

Include Basic Screen Effects by Emily Short.

When play begins:
	 center "[story title]";
	 center "by [story author]";
	 leave space;
	 center "Press SPACE to begin.";
	 wait for the SPACE key;
	 leave space;
	clear the screen;
	leave space;
	center "'Are you certain?' she clarified.";
	 wait for the SPACE key;
	 leave space;
	clear the screen.	

To leave space:
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break;
	 say paragraph break.