When you submit your written work to be reviewed, critiqued, or read for pleasure, you want to make sure you're putting your best foot forward. You want your readers to focus on story, not on the myriad pitfalls that occur due to bad or rusty grammar.
Here we hope to address some of the more common problems that can distract a reader from the story.
Some things are better illustrated than explained. Here are some examples of basic punctuation in dialogue:
"Hand me my pants," he said.
Note the use of comma before the close quote and the lower case "h".
"Will you hand me my pants?" he asked.
Note the question mark inside the quotes, lower case "h" and the period following "asked".
"Hand me my pants," he said, "so I can finish getting dressed."
Note the comma following "said" and the lower casing following the next open quote. Use this format when interrupting dialogue mid-sentence to identify the speaker.
"Hand me my pants." He pulled his shirt over his shoulders and smoothed the collar. "I've got to finish getting dressed."
Note that when you have 'action' (sometimes called a 'beat') rather than an attribute such as "he said", the dialogue is a contained sentence, ending in period, close quotes. The action following is its own sentence beginning with a cap letter.
If you become confused as to whether you need comma-he-said or period-She-stood, remember that a speech attribute is, as you might surmise speech - ask, say, reply, inquire. Stand, laugh, smile, skate are all actions and cannot be part of a dialogue sentence. A new sentence must be created for action.
If a character is interrupted while speaking, use a dash at the end of his/her dialogue line:
"I never thought -"
"I'd come back," she said. "Surprise."
Note that we don't need to tell the reader that "he" was interrupted. The dash shows it.
If a character's voice 'trails off' as he's speaking, use ellipses:
"I never thought..." he said.
"That's your problem," she said. "You never think."
Similar to the dash, here we don't need to tell the reader "his" voice faced away. The punctuation is doing the work of needless words.
Now that we've got all that straightened out, go off and write a clever, well-punctuated conversation!
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