DIALOGUE: Punctuation & Conventions

Mistook · Aug 26, 2005

This is just a thread to discuss the basic mechanics of dialogue. I've been seeing some stuff in SYW where one character's actions are mixed into the same paragraph as another character's speech.

I've also been recently upbraided for connective commas, so obviously I don't really have it down either. For the sake of noobs, and as an opportunity for oldbs (?) to wax wise, lets go over the rules for formatting dialogue, shall we?

1. Keep a character's speech and action together, right? start a new paragraph whenever a "turn" is taken in action or word by a character? Are there exceptions to this?

2. Comma precedes quotes only when... (?)

3. Period precedes quoted sentence when... (?)

4. What if you have an exclamatory sentence of dialogue followed by explanatory tag or narrative. Do you put a (!) before the closing quote, or a comma?

5. You can imagine all the other questions that might come up in a thread like this. What are you two cents on the mechanics of dialogue?

reph · Aug 26, 2005

1. Keep a character's speech and action together, right? start a new paragraph whenever a "turn" is taken in action or word by a character? Are there exceptions to this?

Lots of judgment calls here. Always start a new paragraph when someone speaks who isn't the person who spoke in your current paragraph. For other situations, it depends. A fight scene might involve many actions by several characters but require only one paragraph.

2. Comma precedes quotes only when... (?)

Do you mean the comma after "He said" or the comma (in U.S. style) before the closing quotation mark?

3. Period precedes quoted sentence when... (?)

...when what precedes the period is a complete sentence.

John opened his briefcase. "I have all the documents right here."

4. What if you have an exclamatory sentence of dialogue followed by explanatory tag or narrative. Do you put a (!) before the closing quote, or a comma?

You put a "!" instead of the comma. Same with a question mark.

"Gosh darn it!" John said. He stared into the empty briefcase.

"What happened to the documents?" Bill asked.

Maryn · Aug 26, 2005

This section of an elderly handout might clarify some aspects of punctuating dialogue in the US--the rules aren't identical in the entire English-speaking world, of course.
-----
HOW DO I PUNCTUATE DIALOGUE? When your character finishes a sentence but you will add an attribute such as ‘he said,’ end the dialogue with a comma before the closing quotation mark (‘inside the quote’).

“Good for you,” he said.

Exclamations and questions keep their original end punctuation, also inside the final quotation mark. Do not add a comma in addition to the question mark or exclamation point.

“Good for you!” he said.

“Really?” she asked.

When your attribute interrupts dialogue, break it with a comma, put a comma after your attribute, and resume without capitalizing unless the next word requires it.

“But Sam,” I said, “you can’t swim!”

“But Sam,” I said, “Jan can’t swim!”

When your attribute appears at the end of a complete sentence of dialogue which resumes immediately after the attribute, the new sentence must be capitalized.

“She can dog-paddle,” Sam said. “She just can’t do the Australian crawl.”

“So what?” Sam said. “The water’s only three feet deep.”

When a character is recalling dialogue directly, word for word, and asking herself about it, the question mark is outside the quotation marks unless the dialogue itself was a question. (This one varies, so this is only one way that is acceptable, depending on who's doing the judging.)

Hadn’t I said, “You can’t leave”?

Didn’t she ask me, “Can I go now?”

But if dialogue is not directly quoted, no quotations or capitals are used.

Hadn’t I said she couldn’t leave?
-----
A lot of people who try their hand at writing (some with excellent results) have never been taught how to punctuate dialogue. Teaching yourself as an adult is a little harder, but you've probably got shelves and shelves of good examples.

Maryn, hoping this helped a bit

sassandgroove · Aug 26, 2005

THANK YOU!!!! :Clap:

Sharon Mock · Sep 23, 2005

Engaging in thread resurrection in order to ask a varsity-level question:

"Who are you running from? Or should I ask--" as he squeezed her hand in a way that made her bones twinge-- "who are you running to?"

Is this punctuated properly, despite being only slightly less ugly than sin? It wouldn't be difficult to revise it to get rid of the issue entirely, but at the moment I'm still rather fond of that mid-sentence beat. (By the way, the speaker's lack of grammatic nicety is intentional.)

And would this alternate form also be properly punctuated?

"Who are you running from? Or should I ask--" He squeezed her hand in a way that made her bones twinge. "--who are you running to?"

(Man, that's ugly. The first is far preferable.)

Mistook · Sep 23, 2005

Sharon Mock said:
Engaging in thread resurrection in order to ask a varsity-level question:

Is this punctuated properly, despite being only slightly less ugly than sin? It wouldn't be difficult to revise it to get rid of the issue entirely, but at the moment I'm still rather fond of that mid-sentence beat. (By the way, the speaker's lack of grammatic nicety is intentional.)

And would this alternate form also be properly punctuated?

(Man, that's ugly. The first is far preferable.)

I'm no expert, but taking a stab at this, I'd say you don't need the second M dash in either version. I can see why you'd want to use the first M dash rather than an elipsis, to get across the suddenness. I also do like that mid sentence beat, and having it all flow as one sentence with the "as" after the break.

That's now how I would've thought to do it, but having seen it, I like it.

reph · Sep 23, 2005

Sharon Mock said:
"Who are you running from? Or should I ask--" as he squeezed her hand in a way that made her bones twinge-- "who are you running to?"

No. This* will work:

"Who are you running from? Or should I ask"--he squeezed her hand in a way that made her bones twinge--"who are you running to?"

________
*Assuming that bones can twinge.

victoriastrauss · Sep 24, 2005

reph said:
No. This* will work:

"Who are you running from? Or should I ask"--he squeezed her hand in a way that made her bones twinge--"who are you running to?"

Yup. Somehow I have a blind spot with this, and persist in putting the em dashes inside the quotation marks. I'm going through a copy edited ms. right now, and the copy editor has had to correct this several times.

- Victoria

maestrowork · Sep 24, 2005

Just be consistent. If you use the em-dash in place of commas in dialogue, then use it consistently. I believe in Cold Mountain, Fraser uses em-dashes in place of quotation marks. You get used to it after a while since he's very consistent.

aruna · Sep 24, 2005

Here's a useful page on hyphens and dashes:
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/091502.htm

Recently I read anovel in which the author did not punctuate dialogue at all.
(The In-between World of Vikram Lall).

Typical dialoigue in this book:

What was the marriage ceremony like? Papa asked.
Dada said, The medicine man sprinkled the couple with water, they had to wear leaves and walk around, and then they went to spend the night in a hut.
Wah, said Papa with a sigh.
You sound regretful you didn't marry a Masai, Mother reprimanded.

Even though I liked the book, I found this very irritating. It seemed to make the characters and their conversation cold; almost like reported speech. I didn't see any reason for it; it seems some kind of post-modern literary device without any practical purpose.

(PS sorry, can't get it to indent. The dialogue IS indented.)

maestrowork · Sep 24, 2005

aruna said:
What was the marriage ceremony like? Papa asked.
Dada said, The medicine man sprinkled the couple with water, they had to wear leaves and walk around, and then they went to spend the night in a hut.
Wah, said Papa with a sigh.
You sound regretful you didn't marry a Masai, Mother reprimanded.

Even though I liked the book, I found this very irritating.

I think sometimes we feel irritated because it seems like the authors are trying too hard to be cute and different. And dialogue without the proper punctuations just reads raw and unpolished.

aruna · Sep 24, 2005

maestrowork said:
I think sometimes we feel irritated because it seems like the authors are trying too hard to be cute and different. And dialogue without the proper punctuations just reads raw and unpolished.

Yes. Trying to hard. BTW I got the name in the title wrong: Vikram Lall, not Seth

reph · Sep 24, 2005

aruna, to see the code for indenting, bring up this post as if you were going to reply to it:

Sample of indented text

It's easy once you know the trick.

aruna · Sep 24, 2005

reph said:
aruna, to see the code for indenting, bring up this post as if you were going to reply to it:
Sample of indented text

It's easy once you know the trick.

testing:

What was the marriage ceremony like? Papa asked.
Dada said, The medicine man sprinkled the couple with water,
they had to wear leaves and walk around, and then they went to spend the night in a hut.
Wah, said Papa with a sigh.
You sound regretful you didn't marry a Masai, Mother reprimanded.

Ok, that worked.. but how do I get parts of that NOT to indent?

reph · Sep 24, 2005

Oh, you're asking how to get a paragraph indent? I don't know.

Testing by indenting five spaces, using the space bar, and typing a long line that should come back to the left margin after using up the available width ... ... ... ... ... ...

Well, that didn't work. You can get an indent within an indent by using the "indent" command twice, but I don't know how to make this software handle runovers properly.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 24, 2005

maestrowork said:
Just be consistent. If you use the em-dash in place of commas in dialogue, then use it consistently. I believe in Cold Mountain, Fraser uses em-dashes in place of quotation marks. You get used to it after a while since he's very consistent.

I think that was the publisher's choice. I never did get used to it, and stopped reading because I found it so incredibly annoying. I also wrote a nasty letter to the publisher.

Sharon Mock · Sep 25, 2005

Thanks for the help -- I don't feel quite so bad about not getting it right. I try to avoid the construction, but sometimes I just can't resist.

And of course bones can twinge. Just try backpacking seven miles without proper preparation and -- oh, wait. That has nothing to do with my example. Never mind....

sarbruis · Sep 26, 2005

Hey, I've got a question. Please tell me if the following are correct:

1. "Sometimes . . ." he said. (Or should there be a comma?)
2. "What . . . ?" he asked.

reph · Sep 26, 2005

sarbruis, both examples look funny to me. I'm in a minority here in not accepting ". . ." in dialogue. I still want to reserve ellipses for omitted material – the way it USED to be! When people did things RIGHT! Before the DECLINE and FALL of English! Okay, you get the idea.

If ellipses to show where a speech trails off were suddenly to look natural to me, I'd still think something was wrong in those two examples. Trailing off means nothing follows. There should be a blank space (i.e., the rest of the line of type) to indicate silence. Putting "he said" there ruins the effect. You want a "nothing" after the utterance.

My opinion.

MarkPettus · Sep 26, 2005

Correct? I believe it is, but the better question is Reph's; does it work?

I don't think so, not in that sentence. If you trail off and then pick up again, dialogue attribution might provide a pause:

"Sometimes . . ." he said, "you have no choice."

If you are trailing off to silence, I agree with Reph that you should end with silence.

He said, "Sometimes...."

or "Sometimes...?"

maestrowork · Sep 26, 2005

sarbruis said:
Hey, I've got a question. Please tell me if the following are correct:

1. "Sometimes . . ." he said. (Or should there be a comma?)
2. "What . . . ?" he asked.

"Sometimes..." he said.

"What?" he asked. or "What--" he said.

Jamesaritchie · Sep 26, 2005

sarbruis said:
Hey, I've got a question. Please tell me if the following are correct:

1. "Sometimes . . ." he said. (Or should there be a comma?)
2. "What . . . ?" he asked.

I'm a firm believer in allowing ellipses in dialogue. It's been done forever, almost before there was such a thing as English, and done by the very best writers. It IS good English, and not doing it means getting it wrong. But even I think the above reads very poorly. I can't see a need for either, and both, in fact, look redundant.

If you want a pause in the first sentence, the "he said" takes care of it. If you're trying to show speech is trailing off, the he said looks out of place, words after silence. There are also quotation marks, so I know he said "Sometimes. . ." You don't have to tell me again by adding "he said" unless not doing so means I can't tell who the speaker is.

I may also be in the minority on this one, but I hate combining a question mark with the words "he asked." You don't need both. A question mark means "he asked," and "he asked" means you don't need the question mark

Jamesaritchie · Sep 26, 2005

maestrowork said:
"Sometimes..." he said.

"What?" he asked. or "What--" he said.

Or just:

"Sometimes. . ."

"What?"

reph · Sep 27, 2005

You can have something follow a trailing-off speech without causing incongruity if it isn't a speech tag and it starts a new sentence.

"Do you have trouble making decisions?" I asked.

"Well . . ." He looked away.

fedorable1 · Sep 27, 2005

On a related note:

Is it preferable to type an ellipses as ... or . . . ?

Spaces or none?

DIALOGUE: Punctuation & Conventions

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