Crash Course in Dialogue Punctuation
A lot of people have trouble when it comes to punctuating dialogue, and that’s okay. It’s not an uncommon problem, and it is something that can be corrected.
There are three types of dialogue: direct dialogue, indirect dialogue, and internal dialogue.
Direct dialogue is a person or character’s speech and is written between quotation marks. For instance, “You can have one cookie,” his mother said.
Indirect dialogue is a report or recount of someone speaking and is written into the description or blocking of a scene. For instance: His mother said he could have one cookie.
Internal dialogue is the equivalent of thought. It doesn’t need to be enclosed in quotation marks, but it can be written in different ways—some authors write thoughts in normal text font, others italicise it to set it apart from the narration.
Direct dialogue is usually written with a dialogue tag, such as ‘said’, ‘whispered’, ‘muttered’, ‘shouted’, ‘stammered’, and all the other words that are synonymous.
The first thing about punctuating dialogue is that dialogue always begins with a capitalised word, no matter whether the dialogue is before the dialogue tag or after it. The only exception to this is when interrupted dialogue resumes. (There are examples of all of these below.)
It’s best to write dialogue in a paragraph of its own—you should start a new paragraph every time you change subject/focus (whether it’s a description of a character or setting, a new action, thought, or shifting focus from one character to another), place/setting, time, or a person’s dialogue. This helps distinguish shifts between characters, topics, and settings.
When writing an uninterrupted single line of dialogue without a dialogue tag, the entire sentence including the punctuation (full stop, question mark, or exclamation point) at the end fit between the quotation marks. For example,
“Please don’t go.”
“What were you thinking?”
“No!”
If the dialogue is a single line of interrupted dialogue, the punctuation at the end of the sentence is replaced with an em dash (which is written by typing two hyphens/dashes without a space between the last word and the quotation marks—most writing programs will automatically correct it to a longer dash, however not all do). For example,
“Please don’t—"
When writing a single line of dialogue with a dialogue tag following, you finish the dialogue with a comma inside the quotation mark and a full stop after the dialogue tag. The dialogue tag should be lower case unless it’s the person’s name (keep an eye out for this because if you’re writing on an iPad, iPhone or something else, it sometimes corrects it to a capital letter when it shouldn’t be).
“Please don’t go,” he begged.
“No,” Ryan replied.
If the dialogue is a question or a line that is amplified by an exclamation mark, they replace the comma with the question mark or exclamation mark, but make sure to keep the dialogue tag in lower case unless it’s a name.
“Do you have to go?” he asked.
“Shut up!” Alex bellowed.
When writing the dialogue tag first, the comma goes at the end of the dialogue tag, the dialogue is capitalised (because it’s a sentence in and of itself), and a full stop (or question mark or exclamation mark) at the end of the dialogue, but inside the quotation mark. For example,
He said, “I love you.”
These rules not only apply to dialogue in fiction, but also to quotes in essays. The only difference being, if you’re putting in a reference, you introduce the quote, insert the quote but leave out the punctuation at the end of the sentence (unless it’s a question mark), close the quotation marks and enter the reference and then put the period or punctuation mark on the outside of the reference. This clarifies that the reference belongs to that quote.
When writing a single line of dialogue with a dialogue tag and action, the rules are similar to those above. The only difference is the dialogue tag is followed by a comma and an action if the tense shifts (if this is a bit confusing, I did write another post on shifting tenses here - that hopefully helps), or the action and tag are combined in one sentence.
“Are you coming or not?” he asked, pulling on his jacket.
“I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder as he ran towards the door.
If the dialogue tag goes before the dialogue, the action goes before the dialogue tag.
He reached out and gently brushed a stand of hair back behind her ear, whispering, “You’re safe now. I promise.”
She turned and screamed, “Run!”
When the dialogue is split into two sentences, things get a little more complicated. If a line of dialogue is interrupted by a dialogue tag and then resumes the same sentence, you put a comma at the end of the first line (inside the quotation mark) and after the dialogue tag (and action if included) before resuming the dialogue in lower case. For example,
“We went to the carnival,” Mike said, “and I got to ride the Ferris wheel.”
“I wanted so badly to make you proud,” he said, fighting back tears, “but you never cared.”
When separating the line of dialogue into two sentences, you do the same as above, but replace the comma that comes after the dialogue tag (or action) with a full stop and capitalise the start of the dialogue that follows.
“He needed you,” she said. “But you were never there.”
“We’re too late,” she said, sitting back from his still body. “He’s gone.”
This, however, changes if the action comes first. In this case, the first part of the dialogue ends in a full stop, the sentence including the action is capitalised and ends in a comma after the dialogue tag.
“That could actually work.” He stood up and turned to face Noah, adding, “But I’m still mad at you.”
“Shut up!” He waited for the room to fall silent before continuing, “If we’re going to do this, then we have to do it right.”
If dialogue is interrupted by an action or a thought with no dialogue tag, there are two ways of writing it.
If the action or thought interrupts the single line of dialogue, you end the first part of the sentence without punctuation and then put the action or thought between two em dashes. For example,
“We were meant to be a team”—at least she thought they were—“but you were only in this for yourself.”
If the dialogue can be split into two sentences, then the punctuation is similar to the earlier examples, except the commas are replaced with full stops. For example,
“I love you.” He paused, letting out a deep sigh. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Jack?” He sounded surprised. “What are you doing here?”
If you write a line of dialogue that trails off, the rules are the same as your usual line of dialogue except you use and ellipsis (…) instead of a comma at the end of the dialogue. For example,
“I don’t remember…”
“If only…” he whispered.
“Maybe if I…” His voice trailed off as he began to tinker with the machine.
If you write a line of dialogue that follows an action but has no dialogue tag, then you use regular sentence structures (with full stops). For example,
He patted her head. “Don’t ever change, kid.”
The final rule is don’t overload your paragraphs. Try and stick to one or two segments of dialogue per paragraph—whether it’s a line of dialogue with an action or dialogue tag, or two parts of dialogue split by a dialogue tag, thought, action or description.
An example of what not to do—
“Alright.” His father rose from his chair, shoving the last bite of his toast into his mouth as he dumped the plate in the sink and grabbed his jacket and a traveller mug of coffee. “I need to head off to work. If you’re looking for Alex, he’s working an extra shift at the gas station,” he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the door. “I’ll see you when I get back tonight.”
If you were to fix this, you’d just need to break it up more.
“Alright.”
His father rose from his chair, shoving the last bite of his toast into his mouth as he dumped the plate in the sink and grabbed his jacket and a traveller mug of coffee.
“I need to head off to work. If you’re looking for Alex, he’s working an extra shift at the gas station,” he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the door. “I’ll see you when I get back tonight.”
Hopefully this helps.
