If you start with the dialogue tag, put a comma after it, before your opening quotation mark and the dialogue:Ĥ. Even though no dialogue tag has been used, it is clear who spoke. I am going to the store before I come home from work. She put it on and walked across the living room to the door. Miriam pulled her jacket out of the closet. * If there’s no attribute (he said, she said), put a period inside the closing quotation mark.ģ. The above example sentence could have been written in a different way. Then put your period at the end of the sentence. * If the person speaking is making a statement (or a suggestion or a command), replace the period (which would follow if it weren’t in quotation marks) with a comma. *Note that in the above examples, even though your word processor wants you to put a capital letter for “she” or “he”, these need to be lowercase, as they don’t start a new sentence. * If the person is asking a question, the question mark goes inside the quotation mark, and a period goes at the end of the whole sentence. In North America, the punctuation always goes inside the end quote, not outside it: Use as many dialogue tags as it takes to keep things clear Keeping it to a minimum is great when you only have one or two characters speaking, but that isn’t always how it goes. (But don't put quotation marks around thoughts.)Ģ. Put quotation marks around all spoken words. On the other hand, don’t start a new paragraph if it’s still the same speaker, unless you’re doing it for a good reason, like a pause or emphasis.ġ. So if you want your manuscript to look professional and your story to read smoothly, it’s best to follow these technical guidelines.įirst of all, start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes. Using correct punctuation and form for dialogue will keep your readers from becoming distracted, confused or annoyed, and maintain their focus on your story. This article just provides a reference for the correct punctuation and capitalization for writing dialogue, as well as some style tips for dialogue tags. Also, check out another post of mine, Some Dialogue Don’ts. Drop over there for some advice on making your dialogue less stilted and more natural-sounding. But those are very specialized situations.In another article, Amp up That Dialogue!, I discuss various techniques for writing dialogue that will come alive on the page. It can be useful if you're trying to show that the character is disoriented, or is overwhelmed and becoming aware of events out of sequence. This forces the reader to resequence the events, which is jarring. I would probably avoid "he said, after." The sequence in the text mismatches the sequence in which the events happened. The fifth gives a rich, more complex mood that I'm not sure how to summarize. In the third, he seems embarrassed not by what he is feeling, but by having proclaimed his love, or perhaps by the lack of an immediate response. In the second, he seems more breathless and blurting. In the first one, he proclaims his love despite his embarrassment. I got different impressions of the character from each of your "I probably love you" examples. The temporal arrangement of emotions, actions, and dialogue can create subtext that nicely expresses the character's mood. Some of your phrasings give cues about the order of events. Reading the passage out loud, in context, is a big help here. It will be helpful to keep this in mind as we explore my advice on how to use dialogue tags and how. Perhaps the most important thing to consider here is that the core function of a dialogue tag is to indicate which character is speaking. For that, I listen to the rhythm, tempo, and sounds. Dialogue tags are (usually) essential when writing fiction, and good use can really elevate the prose. When different phrasings all have more or less the same meaning, I choose the phrasing that creates the tone or mood I want.
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