Italics or Quotes

I'd keep the quotation marks, but I'd replace the commas with em dashes, since each piece of dialogue is essentially a parenthetical — if you remove the dialogue, the words around them still make sense.

I recommend removing one of the examples, though, and making the remaining two tighter, since the sentence is very long (77 words) and a bit difficult to read. If you cut it after the greenery example, the reader still gets a sense of his assistant without losing direction. I think you can even afford to cut the second snippet of dialogue—it makes the humor of the first stand out more. For example:

His office would not be a welcoming sanctuary without her handprint. Her touch was everywhere, from the carefully selected reading material—“Brett, if we put psych magazines in the waiting room, you know people will just self-diagnose"—to the flourishing greenery.

I copy and pasted this.

Now we come to a biggy, the handling of quotation and dialogue. Quotation marks are used to indicate direct quotations and dialogue. It would follow, then, that they are not used to punctuate indirect quotations (including the recounting of dialogue). If a direct quote or dialogue is introduced by a descriptive phrase (called an “attribution”), the attribution is separated from the quote or dialogue with a comma:

Lord Acton said, “. . . absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (direct quotation)
Lord Acton said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. (indirect quotation)

Elizabeth said, “I refuse to take another step.” (dialogue)
Elizabeth said she refused to take another step. (recounting of dialogue)

You can see that, whether you are dealing with factual quotes or fictional dialogue, the usage is quite similar. Whenever you are putting the speaker’s actual words on the page (whether real or made up), use quotation marks; when you are merely telling your reader what someone said (whether that someone is a real person or a fictional character), don’t use quotation marks.

Now here are three very important rules about punctuation with quotation marks that you should memorize (or at least write down and keep handy):

This is the website I found it on. http://resources.writersonlineworkshops.com/resources/quotation-marks-and-dialogue-mechanics/
As for italics, they are distracting and you shouldn't need them to convey thoughts.

I would rewrite that entirely. You have a long sentence that has multiple periods in it, which is going to confuse some readers. If you're already using periods, why not make multiple sentences? You don't need the 'from/to' as the paragraph already sets the topic at hand.

His office would not be a welcoming sanctuary without her handprint. Her touch was everywhere. The carefully selected reading material reminded him of her proclaiming, “Brett, we are not putting psych magazines in the waiting room. You don’t need people self-diagnosing themselves.” The flourishing greenery in his office was there because “It’s been proven plants can be beneficial in lifting a person’s spirits.” The tastefully displayed artwork was “cheerful and uplifting without being in-your-face. Patients shouldn’t feel like we’re hitting them over the head to be cheerful.”

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This way, you have a lot more room to play with each thought, rather than trying to make the punctuation force the way it's read. You can toss in exclamation points, other punctuation, or italics as suits. You could make each sentence with a quote from her its own paragraph if you want the sense of him looking around slowly and taking this in, rather than it being all at once.


I'd get rid of one of those two 'cheerful's too.

His office would not be a welcoming sanctuary without her handprint. Her touch was everywhere.

The carefully selected reading material reminded him of her proclaiming, “Brett, we are not putting psych magazines in the waiting room! You don’t need people self-diagnosing themselves.”

The flourishing greenery in his office was there because she'd told him with a smile that “It’s been proven plants can be beneficial in lifting a person’s spirits.”

The tastefully displayed artwork was “uplifting without being in-your-face.” He laughed, thinking of the sour face she always made looking at the painting of children playing before she finally took it down. “Patients shouldn’t feel like we’re hitting them over the head to be cheerful.”

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skyhawk0 said:

You have a long sentence that has multiple periods in it, which is going to confuse some readers. If you're already using periods, why not make multiple sentences?

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If there are multiple periods, it's already multiple sentences.

caw

I agree with @borogove on the em dashes and tightening.

What do I do?

Double quote: Actual dialogue.
Single quote: Quotation within dialogue or narrative.
Italics: Thought, emphasis within narrative, or narrated written material or broadcast.