#dialogue punctuation

[scifibabee]

Dialogue Punctuation Cheat Sheet

hey friends, i've found myself talking about dialogue grammar a lot as i do more and more beta'ing, so figured it'd be helpful to share more broadly :)

1. Dialogue + Tag (same sentence):

"I missed you," he said. "I missed you," Will said.

Use a comma inside the quotation marks.

Don't capitalize the dialogue tag unless it starts with a name.

2. Dialogue + Action (separate sentence):

"I missed you." He stepped closer.

Use a period inside the quotation marks.

The action isn't a dialogue tag, so it stands as its own sentence.

3. Dialogue Split in Two (same sentence continues):

"I think," he murmured, "that you should stay." "I think that," he murmured, "Will should stay."

Use a comma before closing the quotation mark and after the tag.

Don't capitalize the second part unless it's a name or proper noun.

4. Dialogue Split in Two (separate sentences):

"You're here," he said. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

Use a period after the tag, because the next quote is a new sentence.

Capitalize the new sentence of dialogue.

5. Tag + complete sentence of dialogue:

He released a breath before answering, "Always."

Use a comma after the tag.

Capitalize the complete sentence of dialogue.

6. Questions & Exclamations:

"Are you serious?" he asked. "Don't touch me!" he snapped.

Keep the ? or ! inside the quotes.

Follow with a lowercase tag unless it starts with a name.

hope this is helpful for somebody out there!!

[topaz-eyes]

This is an excellent dialogue punctuation reference!

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[penstricken]

Top Tips for Writing Beautiful Dialogue

Read my top tips for writing dialogue in my new blog post here 👇 #amwriting #writing #fiction #writer

Dialogue is a critical part of any novel. Apart from the fact it makes up a monumental chunk of your overall word count, it can be a powerful tool for creating suspense, driving the plot and fleshing out your characters. Get it right, and you’re halfway towards writing a killer novel. Get it wrong, and you’re done for. If you really want to see a master of dialogue at work, you should read Hills…

[druid-for-hire]

hawkeye and trapper get fake septums

(id under the cut)

[image id: a three-page digital comic about characters from the TV show MASH, illustrated by "druid-for-hire." On page 1, frank burns squints at Hawkeye from a short distance, who is next to Trapper, who is reading a newspaper that obscures his face. "Pierce," Burns asks, "what's on your face?" Hawkeye turns to face him, revealing a septum piercing. "what's what, Frank?" he asks. Shocked and affronted by this breach in army regulations, he shouts, "I can't!! Believe you!! It's not enough for you to disagrace the army uniform by being out of it all the time? You have to go and--and do that! You look like a punk! Or a cow!"

On page 2, Hawkeye, unbothered, replies "Y'know, Frank, I'm finally living up to the Pierce name. I was thinking about going for some ear tag earrings. Maybe I can get a nurse to pull my udders." Frank howls, "That's disgusting!" Turning to Trapper he shouts, "Did you have anything to do with this, McIntyre?" Trapper pulls down the newspaper to reveal that he's wearing three septum rings and says, "I sure did! He stole my look!"

On page 3, Frank says "You're both terrible. Both of your butts are going on report!" while Hawkeye takes out his apparently fake septum ring behind his back. "Report for what, Frank?" he asks; Frank turns to see that the piercing is now missing. "Yeah, what's the matter, Frank?" Trapper says, whose piercing is suddenly missing as well. Frank storms off, yelling "Neither of you can pull the wool over my eyes!! Just wait until General Barker hears about this!" Some time later, Frank is standing next to General Barker, pointing at Hawk. "General, I'm telling you, the hole is THERE!" he shouts. "Go and take a look in those nostrils for yourself!" There is a long and awkward pause. The General did not like that. Hawkeye remarks, "Gee Frank, take a girl to dinner first." end id]

[auriidae]

the amount of em dashes i use when writing ethubs is frankly embarrassing

[philosopherking1887]

Actually, the en-dash thing isn't quite right. If you have an en-dash, you need spaces on either side of it; without spaces, it should be an em-dash. If you type one or two hyphens surrounded by spaces (like - this or -- this), Microsoft Word will automatically format it as an en-dash; if you type two hyphens without spaces (like--this), it will format as an em-dash, which is longer. (The names refer to the width of the character: traditionally, equivalent to either an n or an m in the same typeface.)

All the stuff about commas and periods is correct, though.

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

[short666bread]

Haha. I posted fic. don’t read it.

[catsoupki]

“what are you doing?” bakugou mumbles

“nothing, will you just go back to sleep?” you don’t look at him when you speak, but instead you focus all of your attention onto your current task

“well i can’t when you’re just making random metal clashing noises next to me, just get back onto the bed and leave it for later when we wake up again, it’s not that fucking urgent”

you take a deep breath, but with the way you roughly slam the spoons into the box that houses the forks, it sends a grimace onto his face. in turn, he rolls over from facing you and now the wall

“if you did this when i asked you to yesterday maybe i wouldn’t have to do it right now but you didn’t, so just wait two more god damn minutes and then you can sleep again okay?”

he sighs, and for a moment you think that he’ll keep his mouth shut and keep quiet for once, suddenly the utensils you’re organising feel cold and biting against your skin, they feel like they’re drooping and melting into putty right in between your grasp, and you can’t catch it

“can you just give it a rest?” he goes from facing the wall to sitting up, the curtains flutter slightly in the wind and it tussles his hair in a way that makes you want to cry

“no i can’t fucking do that! i’ve laid out my life right in front of you and i’ve given you myself yet it’s still not enough! you’re a hero who doesn’t get to sleep at night fine i get it! but i’m not any less important so don’t you ever go around and speak to me like that ever again! you promised me all those eight years ago in that basketball court the day we graduated, and you remember what i said yeah? if you did i’d fucking leave!”

all the work you’ve been doing the past ten minutes is rinsed down the drain, useless and helpless to end, the flailing of your arms has caused the box that stored all the metal utensils to fall onto the floor. chopsticks, spoons, forks and knives poke at the hardwood floor and at the edges of furniture, it doesn’t chip the wall, it chips your heart instead.

you’re tired, and even when you’re not dressed for the outside, in mere pyjama pants and a random shirt that you go to sleep in, you walk towards the door and leave the mess behind you

[wemlygust]

I'm a little bit fascinated by fanfic authors who clearly have an idea of how people talk and who are writing good dialogue, except they also just kinda, sorta... Leave out all the punctuation. So it reads like a weird stream of consciousness with no pauses where there should be pauses, but if they went and added the punctuation in it would be good. It's just this one issue of not understanding punctuation at all, seemingly. Even the spelling is fine. How does someone end up with just this problem to such a degree (and seemingly moreso with dialogue than otherwise), but while understanding every other writing element much better? Is it just someone writing on a phone and not bothering to type out punctuation? Is it someone who has learnt to read from texts and internet posts, who just hasn't see written dialogue much before? But even this doesn't make sense to me because the author I'm reading now did get the paragraph/dialogue format right to indicate who is speaking by action beats; a lot of new fanfic writers fuck that up and accidentally assign dialogue to the wrong people by putting line breaks in the wrong places, but this person got that alright. They seriously ONLY have an issue with punctuation within the quote marks. This post isn't to shame anyone for writing fanfic without already being perfect at everything - no. I'm enjoying this most recent fic a lot actually, too. I'm just really curious what circumstances lead someone to have this issue with writing dialogue in particular, even though they're doing just fine with the other aspects of the task. I've come across multiple authors who write like this, at this point; it's not just a one-off occurrence. Is there, like... A type of dyslexia that mainly applies to punctuation? Or a similar disorder? Or is it something about the way writing/English is taught now, related to schools abandoning phonics en masse for years (something I am still amazed happened)? Is it something else? Is it a mystery forever?

[corviiids]

THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

[burinazar]

mannn. i do feel like kind of bitchy on the occasions when i go to read a fic and then have to give up on it partway in because I can’t look past an avoidable recurring punctuation issue that irks my brain every time i see it and it’s everywhere and clearly isn’t a typo or style choice versus based on not knowing a punctuation rule. but like. i just can’t. i’m sorry

[fabled-lady-twilla]

Writers, I need help! I have a punctuation question concerning dialogue.

Which out of the two examples below is correct?

"Stop worrying so much," Izuku said, frowning with concern, "you're only going to stress yourself out more."

"Stop worrying so much," Izuku said, frowning with concern. "You're only going to stress yourself out more."

[andrewmfriday]

Punctuating Inner Monologue

Photo by Samantha Garrote

For a while now, I have been trying to navigate the way to format and punctuate inner dialogue. I’m always asking myself Am I doing this right? when I’m creating a scene.

So, I decided to do a little deep dive into unlocking the minds of my characters. Or to be more specific, how to express what they are thinking on this inside.

I was surprised at how many ways exist to present inner monologue.

That’s good news. I can use whichever method I find serves the purpose of what I am writing. But, wow, I just didn’t realize how many ways exist to show the inner demons of my characters. 

And I’m going to share what I found. This article is less about the purpose of inner monologue than how to punctuation it.

Methods of Punctuation and Formatting Inner Monologue

Quotation Marks:

With Dialogue Tags: A sudden gust of wind tousled his hair, and he couldn’t help but smile. “Grandma, I hope I’m making you proud,” he told himself. “Starting this food truck was a leap, but I know it’s the right path.”

This is punctuated just like regular dialogue between two characters. Instead of using the tag said, the writer uses thought, or as in the previous example told himself. Some sources claim a writer should NOT use quotation marks to express inner monologue, but I don’t know why a writer can’t do this if they want.

Italics:

For Emphasis: The moonlit night enveloped Mia as she walked along the deserted beach, the sound of crashing waves creating a soothing symphony. The salty breeze carried memories of a long-lost summer romance. He promised he’d come back, she mused, gazing at the vast expanse of the ocean.

I believe this is the most common way inner monologue is presented by writers. What follows are more specific examples.

First Person:

Italicized with Tag: The city lights glittered below me as I stood on the rooftop, a solitary figure against the urban panorama. Is this where I’m meant to be? I questioned, uncertainty clouding my thoughts. The distant hum of traffic echoed the restlessness within me. 

Italicized without Tag: The city lights glittered below me as I stood on the rooftop, a solitary figure against the urban panorama. Is this where I’m meant to be? Uncertainty clouded my thoughts. The distant hum of traffic echoed the restlessness within me. 

Third Person:

Italicized with Tag: As Emily wandered through the antique bookstore, the scent of old paper and leather bindings surrounded her. What a treasure trove of stories, she thought, her fingers gently tracing the spines. The creaky wooden floors seemed to whisper tales of bygone eras.

Not Italicized without Tag: As Emily wandered through the antique bookstore, the scent of old paper and leather bindings surrounded her. What a treasure trove of stories. Her fingers gently traced the spines. The creaky wooden floors seemed to whisper tales of bygone eras.

Omniscient:

Italicized with Tag: As the clock tower chimed noon, Mrs. Thompson greeted her neighbor, exchanging pleasantries while completely oblivious to the hidden chamber beneath her garden. Little do they realize the mysteries that coexist with their ordinary lives,Austin continued, a silent observer of the unfolding scenes.

Other Techniques:

Start a New Line: The old attic door creaked open, revealing a world frozen in time. Dust particles danced in the dim light as she stepped inside.  This place is a time capsule. Who left these treasures behind? What memories are hidden within these dusty pages? Time has woven its tapestry here, and I’m an intruder in this silent symphony of memories. Here, time stands still, and the echoes of yesteryears paint a portrait of nostalgia. A cracked mirror reflected the passage of years, and she gazed into it.

Dashes and Parentheses: The forest was eerily quiet—I knew he’d abandon me, the coward—and Emily took a cautious step forward, her instincts on high alert.

No Punctuation or Formatting:

Shortest Narrative Distance: For the shortest narrative distance, omit punctuation and formatting altogether, seamlessly integrating thoughts into the text. Here are some examples:

Free indirect speech (used in third person POV): Mary looked out of the window. The relentless rain had caught her off guard, and her umbrella was sitting forgotten by the door. Why did she always forget these things? A sigh escaped her lips as she contemplated the soggy journey that awaited her.

First person POV offers the shortest narrative distance for inner monologue. It’s built right in: The waves crashed against the shore, their rhythmic symphony pulling me into a reflective trance. Am I on the right path? My toes sank into the wet sand. The horizon seemed to hold answers, but the uncertainty lingered like a persistent tide.

Which method should you use? I don’t think it matters as long as you are consistent throughout the story.

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[thesecondsanctuary]

iiiiiiiinteresting

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Me punctuating my WIPs.

[eri-pl]

@papita474 it's the exact same part as you posted.