Musings @musimatsuuno - Tumblr Blog

sounds like the story of a hero to me

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

thewritinggrindstone

And!

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

writing-is-a-martial-art

Reblog to save a writer’s life.

jaydove-writes

Thank you

localcanadiancryptid22

Oh my god thank you. No wonder grammarly keeps complaining about my punctuation when I boot my writing up into word counter

dwtective

they call me the avoider for reasons i don't really want to talk about

beardedmrbean

winterstaryu

"I did it for you" has gotta be my favorite form of betrayal. You gave me a gift I never asked for, and now I have to look around at the world you destroyed with the knowledge that it was gift wrapped and addressed to me.

lilium-dragomir

#HARMONT CORE

yufy01

wonder when this will be done

adobe-outdesign

Trainer who can't figure out why one of their Pokemon won't obey them in battle. Their Pokemon clearly loves them and constantly shows affection outside of battle, the trainer has more than enough gym badges, and it's not like their Pokemon is abnormally powerful. Then they visit the Pokemon Center for a routine checkup and the nurse is like "Well first off your Clefable is deaf"