dialog

Pluraldialogs

Formsdialogs, dialoging, dialoged

1. 1
   exchange of viewsnouncountable or uncountable

   A conversation or other spoken or written exchange between two or more people.

   The mayor promised to open a dialog with residents about the planned highway.

   After hours of dialog, the two leaders still disagreed on the main points.

   Similarconversation, discussion, talks, exchange

   Oppositemonologue

   Note

   The short spelling is a variant of dialogue, and either spelling is correct; Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Francesca Carrara (1834) writes the long form. The noun counts both ways: you start up, maintain or open a dialog, one exchange with a beginning, while hours of dialog treats it as a mass of talk.

2. 2
   spoken linesnoununcountable

   The spoken parts of a script or text in a dramatic or literary work: the words the actors or characters say.

   Critics praised the show's sharp, fast-paced dialog.

   The novelist reads every line of dialog aloud to check that it sounds like real speech.

   Similarscript, lines

   Note

   Writers measure it in lines and pages (a line of dialog, two pages of dialog, a scene with almost no dialog) and balance it against narration and description. In film it also names the recorded speech itself: Housing Problems (1935), which Edgar Anstey co-directed with Arthur Elton, recorded its dialog directly so that slum dwellers could speak for themselves.

3. 3
   literary formnouncountable

   A literary form in which a work is set out so that it resembles a conversation.

   Her new book on ethics is written as a dialog between a teacher and a doubtful student.

   Philosophers have long used the dialog to let opposing views argue it out on the page.

   Note

   Philosophy uses the word for the shape of a whole work, not for the spoken lines of a script. As a count noun it names one such work, and the plural a body of them, like the dialogues of the ancient Greek philosophers. Uncountable, it names the form itself: a treatise written in dialog.

4. 4
   pop-up windownouncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Short for dialog box: a small window on a computer screen that asks the user to confirm something or make a choice.

   The installer threw an error dialog halfway through the setup.

   She dismissed the confirmation dialog and continued editing.

   Note

   A software word, clipped from dialog box: the window that pauses to ask the user for something. In interface writing it usually follows a name or a purpose, as in the New Project dialog of Christopher Tacke and Timothy Bassett's Embedded Visual Basic (2002). Here the short spelling is the norm, and writing dialogue for the window counts as nonstandard. With the conversational noun, either spelling serves.

5. 5
   verbcolloquialintransitive

   To talk or negotiate with others so that everyone involved can reach an understanding.

   We need to dialog with the vendors about the delivery delays before the quarter ends.

   Union leaders have been dialoging with management about the new shift schedule.

   Similartalk, negotiate, confer, communicate

   Note

   Meetings and management memos are where this verb lives, usually built as dialog with someone about something. Many readers hear it as jargon, so in formal writing discuss, talk with or negotiate is the safer choice. With the short spelling the forms are dialoged and dialoging, with a single g and no u.

6. 6
   write as conversationverbtransitive

   To turn something into the form of a conversation between speakers.

   Rather than summarize the debate, the author chose to dialog it, giving each side its own speaker.

   The playwright dialoged the novel's long letters, turning them into scenes between the two sisters.

   Similardramatize

   Note

   The writer's verb takes a direct object, the text being recast: you dialog a debate, or dialog a novel's letters into scenes. That sets it apart from the negotiating verb, which needs with before the other party and never takes the conversation as its object.

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