Characters reading aloud

You can put the journal passages in italics. Or you can indent them. Either way, leave a blank line at the beginning and end of each passage, so that the transition back to your character and his/her comments is clear.

Use dashes. And there'd probably be a change in voice between what's being read and the character inserting his or her own words. For example:

"To be or not to be," Jack recited loudly, "that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and thus by opposing, end them - I think that's how it goes... See I told you I could do Shakespeare and not make a fool of myself."

"Yes, Jack." Larry raised his pint as everyone else in pub stared at Jack, some whispering, some trying to suppress laughter and others laughing raucously. "Get off the bloody table before you make an even bigger fool of yourself."

That's one way, but be careful with your punctuation. I've amended it below.

BusyHoneyBee said:

So something like...

John turned the page. "This entry is from last Thursday.

Indent> " blah blah blah big journal paragraph about Thursday blah blah blah

Indent >"another paragraph blah blah blah

Indent > "Isn't that odd?" he concluded, passing me the journal.(That may or may not be a Capital H depending upon intent.)

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If a character is speaking aloud, the dialogue should be within double quotes (assuming this is American-style English usage and not British-style usage, as you used American style in your snippets in comment #4). If a character is reading aloud from a book, he is essentially quoting someone else. Therefore, using single quotes within double quotes would demarcate the quoted (read aloud) text. Example:

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Grandma opened the book and started reading. "'Petunia was raised on a ranch in a sad little town called Gloomy Gulch. Many years had passed since the gold mine had turned barren, but her family was determined to find other ways to keep their land.'" Grandma looked up at me. "I can already tell I'm going to chuck this book against the wall by the third chapter."
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I would be concerned about how long the passages are that your character is reading aloud, and how critical all that information is to the story. You might consider having the character only read aloud the salient portions that need commenting upon by either himself or another character, and prose your way through the rest. Sometimes the act of telling isn't a demon, but a pace-saver. Example:


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Grandma opened the book and started reading. "'Petunia was raised on a ranch in a sad little town called Gloomy Gulch. Many years had passed since the gold mine had turned barren, but her family was determined to find other ways to keep their land.'" Grandma looked up at me. "I can already tell I'm going to chuck this book against the wall by the third chapter. Shall I continue?"

"Sure, why not," I said. "Netflix is down."

It wasn't too horrible until Grandma came to the part where the author described Petunia as having raven hair, cerulean eyes, and flawless skin, with a mention that the character was so achingly beautiful that it was a curse rather than a blessing. My chicken soup threatened to make a return trip from my stomach. "Can you skip to the part where the evil sheriff shows up to shove Mary Sue down an abandoned mine shaft?"

Grandma laughed. "It doesn't turn out that way. Here, I'll skip to the end. 'And then Petunia and the evil sheriff's long-lost identical twin brother rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. The End.'"

I wrinkled my nose. "I like my ending better.
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I hope that helps.

If there's a lot to be told, you might want to have the character quote only the pertinent passages and summarize the rest.

BusyHoneyBee said:

@ Zombie Fraggle: I didn't know there were multiple types, I guess I'm aiming for British then, what about my example made it American?

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Using double quotes for main dialogue and single quotes for quoted dialogue is American-style usage. For British usage, it's the opposite. There are also punctuation differences for quoted dialogue. British style (more sensibly, IMHO) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks instead of inside.

It will benefit you greatly to pick up a grammar-and-style book for whichever style (American or British) you'll be using, as these are fundamental skills that you need to learn.

Good luck with your writing!

I'm British, and I've never in my life used single quotes for dialogue. And I'm not sure what your fourth sentence means either.

ETA- Think I know what you mean now. If the quotation is not a full sentence in itself with its own period, we put the final period outside the quotation mark that is around that quotation. Best to do what we're accustomed to doing and not worry about what is done on the other side of the water.

Zombie Fraggle said:

Using double quotes for main dialogue and single quotes for quoted dialogue is American-style usage. For British usage, it's the opposite. There are also punctuation differences for quoted dialogue. British style (more sensibly, IMHO) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks instead of inside.

It will benefit you greatly to pick up a grammar-and-style book for whichever style (American or British) you'll be using, as these are fundamental skills that you need to learn.

Good luck with your writing!

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Bufty said:

I'm British, and I've never in my life used single quotes for dialogue.

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That's fascinating. Almost every novel I own that was produced by a British publisher (e.g., Hodder & Stoughton) uses the single quotation marks (') for dialogue, and double quotation marks (") for quotes within dialogue. Even for the British versions of books written by American authors, such as Stephen King, the typesetting is changed to reflect British styling. If you look inside one of his recent releases, you'll see the dialogue is done with British-style quotation marks. (Also, British-style doesn't put a period after titles like Mr. and Mrs. like American-style does). I've recognized these differences because I'll often buy the British versions of favorite hardbacks because I tend to like their cover art better. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00RXX81JY/?tag=absowrit-21

I only brought it up because, according to her/his location tag, the OP is in England and I thought the topic germane.

I'm sure individual publishers have their reasons for choosing to use single or double quotes etc.. Maybe it's a cost-saving exercise.

I'm not pressing one way or the other- just mentioning that I was never taught other than to use double quotes for dialogue.

Fellow Brit here. I've seen 'dialogue' and "quote" cited multiple places as the British usage, but I was taught "dialogue" and 'quote' in school so it always confused me to see my usage called American-style. There was also nothing in Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (the best-known American style guide) that felt foreign to what I learned in British education. As a writer, I use "dialogue" and 'quote'.

On the trade pub side of things, I rarely see UK pubs use single quotes for dialogue anymore. I've had one short story market (Fox Spirit, a British Fantasy Society award-winning market) ask me to change to single quotes as part of their house style, but nowhere else.

The bolded one. If there's, say three or six, or whatever, continuous paragraphs from the same speaker, each paragraph is opened with quotes and the final paragraph also has the closing quotes.

BusyHoneyBee said:

Yeah this is a really interesting difference, I've also always been taught to put a period after Mr. and Mrs. I'll have to scan through some novels from different publishers next time I'm at the library and see if there's any variation!

Out of curiosity are you in America Zombie?

As for the topic, I think I'm going to stick to double for dialogue and single for quotes, then italicise the journal entries just for good measure, maybe separate them like in my example too.

Is it good practice to put whatever punctuation you use for dialogue at the beginning of a new line when it's the same person speaking? Like if there were a couple of paragraphs of regular dialogue, would it look like this;

"paragraph 1

paragraph 2"

or

"paragraph 1

"paragraph 2"

thanks for all the help guys!

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EMaree said:

Fellow Brit here. I've seen 'dialogue' and "quote" cited multiple places as the British usage, but I was taught "dialogue" and 'quote' in school so it always confused me to see my usage called American-style.

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Regardless of what is taught in school, most of the UK-published books I've read use 'dialogue' and "quote." And American-published books do the opposite. So that's where the idea of UK vs American style comes from.

Bufty said:

I'm not pressing one way or the other- just mentioning that I was never taught other than to use double quotes for dialogue.

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I'm not pressing either. I'm just wondering, now, why all the British-published books I own use single quotation marks for dialogue and double quotation marks for quotes within dialogue.

I'm British and have seen the single quotes/double quotes thing used in books as described, however at school I was taught to use double quotes for quotes and dialogue. My English teacher even specified that they had to look like a little tiny 66 and 99 and not just two lines, to distinguish between opening and closing quotes. Quotes within quotes were also double ones, but you can tell by the shape that you've just come across another set of opening quotes and it's not a closing quote (or "unquote" as Radio 4 calls them in that "Quote Unquote" programme).

It's not that other styles are wrong. Evidently " is correct otherwise it wouldn't be in a million keyboards and fonts. I was always under the impression that the straight quotes were invented so that keyboards only had to have one quote button and not two. But probably it's just a style thing. Clearly more than one style is correct. Obviously switching styles mid book would be a huge no-no.

Can't answer other than to say maybe it's because you don't happen to own any. My UK printed version of Pullman's Amber Spyglass is double quotes for dialogue. Mind you, whether that means anything in relation to the issue, I have no idea.

I just accept whatever version of dialogue quotes are used in whatever I am reading, whether it be single or double quotes, and I can't say it bothers me either way.

Zombie Fraggle said:

I'm not pressing either. I'm just wondering, now, why all the British-published books I own use single quotation marks for dialogue and double quotation marks for quotes within dialogue.

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When I worked as a transcriptionist, we used " for quotes of actual speech (My granny always said "if the wind changes you'll be stuck like that") and ' for thoughts (...and I thought 'what a daft old bat').

I don't know if that's relevant. I'm now intrigued by the idea that British-published books use ' for quotes, as I have never noticed that, and I have always used ". Is the thing about no dot after Mr. true? I've never noticed that either!

On the 66/99 thing, I notice some fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) do have distinct opening/closing quotes, which are put in by autocorrect depending on the pattern of characters, punctuation and spaces around what you're writing. I've always thought that's quite clever.