Editing Damon Runyon (section)

==Literary style – the "Broadway" stories==
[[File:Breach of promise by Nicolas Bentley.png|thumb|An illustration from "Breach of Promise" showing Spanish John and Harry the Horse]]

The English comedy writer [[Frank Muir]] comments<ref>''The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose'' (1990), OUP, p. 621</ref> that Runyon's plots were, in the manner of [[O. Henry]], neatly constructed with professionally wrought endings, but their distinction lay in the manner of their telling, as the author invented a peculiar [[argot]] for his characters to speak.  Runyon almost totally avoids the past tense (English humorist [[E. C. Bentley]] thought there was only one instance and was willing to "lay plenty of 6 to 5 that it is nothing but a misprint"<ref>''Runyon on Broadway'', Pan Books, 1975, p. 11</ref>), and makes little use of the future tense, using the present for both. He also avoided the conditional, using instead the future indicative in situations that would normally require conditional. An example: "Now most any doll on Broadway will be very glad indeed to have Handsome Jack Madigan give her a tumble" (''Guys and Dolls'', "Social Error"). Bentley<ref>Introduction to ''More Than Somewhat'', included in omnibus volume ''Runyon on Broadway'' (1950), Constable</ref> comments that "there is a sort of ungrammatical purity about it [Runyon's resolute avoidance of the past tense], an almost religious exactitude."  There is an homage to Runyon that makes use of this peculiarity ("[[Chronic Offender]]" by [[Spider Robinson]]), which involves a time machine and a man going by the name "Harry the Horse".

He uses many slang terms (which go unexplained in his stories), such as:
* pineapple = pineapple [[grenade]]
* roscoe/john roscoe/the old equalizer/that thing = gun
* shiv = knife
* noggin = head
* snoot = nose

There are many recurring composite phrases such as:
* ever-loving wife (occasionally "ever-loving doll")
* more than somewhat (or "no little, and quite some"); this phrase was so typical that it was used as the title of one of his short story collections
* loathe and despise
* one and all

Bentley notes<ref>Introduction to ''Furthermore'', included in omnibus volume ''Runyon on Broadway'' (1950), Constable.</ref> that Runyon's "telling use of the recurrent phrase and fixed epithet" demonstrates a debt to [[Homer]].

Runyon's stories also employ occasional rhyming slang, similar to the [[cockney slang|cockney]] variety but native to New York (e.g.: "Miss Missouri Martin makes the following crack one night to her: 'Well, I do not see any Simple Simon on your lean and linger.' This is Miss Missouri Martin's way of saying she sees no diamond on Miss Billy Perry's finger." (from "Romance in the Roaring Forties")).

The comic effect of his style results partly from the juxtaposition of broad slang with mock pomposity. Women, when not "dolls", "Judies", "pancakes", "tomatoes", or "broads", may be "characters of a female nature", for example. He typically avoided contractions such as "don't" in the example above, which also contributes significantly to the humorously pompous effect. In one sequence, a gangster tells another character to do as he is told, or else "find another world in which to live".

In a contemporary introduction to ''The Damon Runyon Omnibus'', the journalist [[Heywood Broun]] says that Runyon's prose style is based on a real dialect spoken in 1930s New York City: "He has caught with a high degree of insight the actual tone and phrase of the gangsters and racketeers of the town. Their talk is put down almost literally... Runyon has exercised the privilege of selectivity. But he has not heightened or burlesqued the speech of the people who come alive in his short stories."<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Damon Runyon Omnibus |last=Runyon |first=Damon |publisher=The Cornwall Press, Inc., for Blue Ribbon Books, Inc. |year=1939 |edition=1st |location=New York City |pages=ix–x}}</ref>

Runyon's short stories are told in the first person by a protagonist who is never named and whose role is unclear; he knows many gangsters and does not appear to have a job, but he does not admit to any criminal involvement, and seems to be largely a bystander.  He describes himself as "being known to one and all as a guy who is just around".<ref name="rob">''Runyon on Broadway'', Pan Books, 1975, p. 12</ref>  The radio program ''The Damon Runyon Theatre'' dramatized 52 of Runyon's works in 1949, and for these the protagonist was given the name "Broadway", although it was admitted that this was not his real name, much in the way "Harry the Horse" and "Sorrowful Jones" are aliases.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Damon_Runyon_Singles] Damon Runyon Theater</ref>