Aug 08 2010
What You Should Know About Comic Book Lettering Before You Write Your Script
Blambot has an awesome article about formatting comic book balloons. It’s aimed at comic book letterers, but I think there are some key points also useful for comic book writers doing a script. For example, do you know how to handle translated dialogue or when to use quotation marks?
- Only use quotation marks when somebody is speaking off-panel. If the speaker is on-panel, readers don’t need quotation marks to know it’s dialogue.
- If you ever end a shouted question with a question mark and an exclamation point, put the question mark first. Readers will have many context clues that the line is being shouted, such as body language and the bolded/italicized text, but the question mark is pretty much the only indication that a question is involved.
- Each period should be followed by one space, not two. Double spaces take too much space and look awkward. (If you habitually use double-spaces, it may help to use your text processor’s Find/Replace feature to replace all periods followed by two spaces with periods followed by single spaces).
- How to handle text translated from a language besides English. See below. Note: Generally, the “*Translated from [Language]” caption is necessary just once per scene. After that, readers can figure out what language the characters are speaking when you use the <greater than/less than signs>.
http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml
