A sentence construct I have not encountered before.

[nq:1]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: "Now I know why we leave them safely at home! ... expressed aloud, therefor not enclosed in quotes. But there's that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering. Opinions?[/nq]
I'm not positive about this, but my immediate reaction is that unexpressed thoughts are conventionally placed within quotation marks.

[nq:1]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: "Now I know why we leave them safely at home! ... not expressed aloud, therefor not enclosed in quotes. But there's that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering.[/nq]
I would have used quotation marks, regardless of the exclamation.

Mark Barratt
Budapest

[nq:1]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: "Now I know why we leave them safely at home! ... expressed aloud, therefor not enclosed in quotes. But there's that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering. Opinions?[/nq]
I've seen it before; I thought it was archaic.

[nq:1]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: "Now I know why we leave them safely at home! ... expressed aloud, therefor not enclosed in quotes. But there's that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering. Opinions?[/nq]
Was somebody else actually thinking the part about "he thought, grinding his teeth"? That sounds very unlikely.
Much more likely is

[nq:2]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: ... exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering. Opinions?[/nq]
[nq:1]Was somebody else actually thinking the part about "he thought, grinding his teeth"?[/nq]
No.
[nq:1]Much more likely is "Now I know why we leave them safely at home!" he thought, grinding his teeth.[/nq]
That seems to be the consensus

My opinion is that editing is a declining craft. There are many excellent editors but the average is slipping. How many books per year can one person edit and compare with the number of books now being published, not to mention magazine articles and newspapers?
dg (domain=ccwebster)

[nq:1]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: "Now I know why we leave them safely at home! ... not expressed aloud, therefor not enclosed in quotes. But there's that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering.[/nq]
In fiction, thoughts are not normally set off by quotation marks. The idea is that they should appear different from things said out loud. An exa

[nq:2]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: ... that exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering.[/nq]
[nq:1]In fiction, thoughts are not normally set off by quotation marks. The idea is that they should appear different from things said out loud. An example from Graham Greene: He thought, If only we could leave now, at once, while L. is at his dinner...[/nq

Donna Richoux wrote on 17 Oct 2004:
[nq:2]In a novel by Colleen McCullough I encounter this sentence: ... exclamation mark in the middle, which leaves me wondering. Opinions?[/nq]
[nq:1]Was somebody else actually thinking the part about "he thought, grinding his teeth"? That sounds very unlikely. Much more likely is "Now I know why we leave them safely at home!" he thought, grinding his te

John Ings wrote on 17 Oct 2004:

I think that both editors and publishers seem to be relying more and more on spell-checkers and grammar-checkers these days that they don't bother checking the actual text as it used to be done. I'm reading a quite well-written book about critical thinking at the moment, and I see errors that point to its being a spell-checker- edited text.

Franke: