He said, She asked.

Example #1 is correct--you don't capitalize "she."

Learn anything? is, grammatically speaking, missing a subject. But I think it's perfectly understandable and is fine for conversation.

I think it's an inversion. The subject is "she," and the verb is "ask." The straight form of the sentence is: She asked "learn anything?" So by inverting the sentence it now becomes: "Learn anything?" she asked.

It doesn't matter whether "Learn anything?" is a complete sentence. The question mark is the source of confusion here. Look at dialog that isn't a question:The standard for punctuating dialog requires that a comma be used in place of a period, whether or not the dialog itself is a complete sentence, as long as it isn't also the end of the narrative sentence which contains it. Similarly, the following "she" is not capitalized, because you're still in the same narrative sentence.

When the dialog is a question, on the other hand, the question mark has to be used, which makes it superficially look like the end of a sentence. Nevertheless, the overall structure remains the same. The dialog is still contained within a narrative sentence and "she" does not begin a new sentence. (The same situation also occurs with exclamation points.)

Now a monkey wrench:

Which is correct:

She asked, "Learn anything?"

or

She asked, "learn anything?"

You want the first, maestrowork. The dialogue tag going at the front doesn't change the capitalization of the quoted sentence.

Same thing. You have to distinguish the dialog from the narrative sentence which contains it. "Learn" is the beginning of the dialog, so it gets capitalized, even when it isn't the beginning of the outer narrative sentence. And again, it doesn't matter whether the dialog itself is a fragment, a complete sentence, or multiple sentences. It still starts with a capital letter.

And then it gets even more complicated:


"Learn anything?" she asked, "Or do you need more time?"

"Learn anything," she asked, "or do you need more time?"

You can use either structure, but if you use the first one, put a period after "asked." The second is correct as stands.

dawinsor said:

You can use either structure, but if you use the first one, put a period after "asked." The second is correct as stands.

Click to expand...

Yes, because it is all part of one sentence. If "or..." was a second sentence altogether then:


"Learn anything?" she asked. "I certainly didn't."

maestrowork said:

And then it gets even more complicated:


"Learn anything?" she asked, "Or do you need more time?"

"Learn anything," she asked, "or do you need more time?"

Click to expand...

First one is wrong. There should be a period after "asked". Second one is correct but doesn't equal the first (assuming you have a period after "asked"). The difference is that the first is made up of two sentences (or a sentence fragment and a sentence to be more precise). The second is a compound sentence with the conjunction "or". If you speak them, one has a longer pause. "She asked" here is just a tag. You can very well do away with it.