by James A. Ritchie » Fri Aug 07, 2015 11:21 am
The first way. It's completely ungrammatical to use a comma in this instance. Action is not the key, action that indicates speech is. This means things such as "stammered", "yelled:, etc. It does not mean any other kind of action. Nodded is no different that "Dutch drew and fired his gun". If you want to indicate he nodded while speaking, which is usually unnecessary, then you have to expand. Dutch continued to nod as he spoke. Either way, it's a period, not a comma. "Dutch nodded" is a complete sentence. So is "Dutch nodded as he spoke." A complete sentence needs a full stop punctuation.
On to[ of this, that's what the word "and" means. "Dutch nodded" does not mean he's nodding as he speaks, whatever punctuation you use. "Dutch nodded and spoke" means he's doing both at the same time. It still doesn't change the punctuation.
If you read enough books, you'll encounter this kind of usage often. Most just write "Dutch nodded". They leave the rest up to the reader. But when they want to make a point, they'll write something like, "Dutch's head continued to bob up and down as he spoke.
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