What would be the proper way to format incoherent dialogue such as gibberish or babbling?
Action description with the word “gibberish” or “babbling” capitalized? Not capitalized? Or action description accompanied by dialogue with scrambled, nonsense words?
You can write it out as a specific dialogue like word salad from a stroke victim or you can do it as a descriptive action if they were speaking in tongues in church for example. Don’t worry about caps.
“His arms raised high, Geoffrey’s eyes roll back as he spouts out incoherent gibberish.”
I 100% agree with Geoffrey. The one reason to take up valuable page space on gibberish dialogue is if they’re dropping a clue within what they’re saying or you want the main characters to riff off some of the gibberish.Â
You can write it out as a specific dialogue like word salad from a stroke victim or you can do it as a descriptive action if they were speaking in tongues in church for example. Don’t worry about caps.
“His arms raised high, Geoffrey’s eyes roll back as he spouts out incoherent gibberish.”
