Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

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1 month ago

I love writing fanfic because sometimes the characters just do what they want without my input. I certainly didn't intend for Lilia and Jade to be scheming together, and yet here they are. This is certainly not a nightmare duo that will cause problems on purpose, not at all

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ihavenofunnynameideas

4 months ago

“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

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ihavenofunnynameideas

2 months ago

fanart

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ihavenofunnynameideas

1 month ago

hey when you make posts, i just want you to know, thou/thee/thy/thine/ye are like he/you(object)/your/yours/you(subject) okay? "thou art wearing shoes," "i will wear shoes for thee," okay?

you say thine if the next word starts with a vowel and thy if the next word starts with a consonant and they both mean "your" so "thine own shoes," "thy shoes," okay?

and ye means you and refers to the subject of a sentence, "ye members of the brotherhood of shoes," okay? you need this information to create better knight yaoi. i'm personally more interested in nun yuri but we are a community

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ihavenofunnynameideas

3 months ago

I need to know what Aha's thought process when blowing up the Astral Express was. They spent, what, a year on the train before it happened? That takes planning. That takes dedication. Did Akivili do something to anger them? Aha had to assume that would attract THEIR attention, right? Did they just think, as they often do, "Oh, this is gonna be so fucking funny," and then dedicate a year to this prank? I need to know what was going through their head.

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hsr honkai star rail swearing aha hsr akivili hsr akivili

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ihavenofunnynameideas

1 month ago

"Fukuzawa adopted Ranpo as his son" this, "Fukuzawa adopted Ranpo as his son" that, you're all WRONG.

Ranpo adopted FUKUZAWA as his dad.

The dude showed up, Fukuzawa fed him, and then Ranpo never left. Ranpo is like a cat that doesn't leave after you gave it a scrap of food.

Fukuzawa just had to roll with it.

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ihavenofunnynameideas

3 months ago

I hate doing self analysis assignments because what if I'm lying to myself at all times

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ihavenofunnynameideas

1 month ago

The NRC Gossip Club would include:

Ortho "can dox someone within a milisecond" Shroud

Rook "is hiding somewhere in a tree" Hunt

Cater "snooping through your Magicam" Diamond

Lilia "knows your uncle's friend's cousin's kid's dogwalker" Vanrouge

Jamil "a totally average guy" Viper

Jade "looks mature but knows a lot" Leech

Ruggie "will sell information for a donut" Bucchi

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ihavenofunnynameideas

3 months ago

One advantage of not really having a strong sense of gender identity is that you’re very [shrug emoji] about how people gender you. Sometimes people call me by she/her pronouns and sometimes they go with he/him pronouns and on the internet people often default to they/them, and neither option is entirely right but also, fuck if I know what would be right, and I don’t particularly care. Therefore I’m perfectly happy to outsource my gender identity to the people around me who actually need to figure out which box to put me in. I don’t need to talk about myself in third person, so really my pronouns sound like a you problem.

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