dialouge between teacher and student about cleanlines in engling
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Learn dialogue rules for good punctuation
Before you can write conversations that bristle with tension or brim with excitement, you need to master the rules for punctuating dialogue. [Below is a brief guide but our 4-week course covers much more. At the end, you’ll submit a piece of dialogue incorporating what you’ve learned for professional critique. Learn more.]
The first rule: Remember to open and close speech marks to set dialogue apart from surrounding narration. At the end of a line of dialogue, if you use a dialogue tag, remember to use a comma before ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ instead of a full stop. The tag is still part of the same sentence. This is a mistake we often see in members’ critique submissions on Now Novel. An example of good dialogue punctuation:
“I wish you would use a comma and not a full stop before your dialogue tag,” she grumbled.
The second rule: If a character’s speech is interrupted by a dialogue tag or action, close and re-open speech marks. Commas always go inside the quoted speech, just before the closing quotation mark, and just before the speech marks re-open. Here’s an example:
“I wish you would stop interrupting,” she said, holding up her palm, “and let me finish!”
The third rule: Always start a new paragraph when a different character starts speaking. This way it’s clear who says what in a scene involving two or more characters.
The fourth rule: If one character speaks over multiple paragraphs, only close quotation marks at the end of the final paragraph. This is used when a character has a long monologue, such as when retelling an event or story. This prevents the reader from erroneously thinking a new character has started talking.