How to Punctuate and Format Dialogue
Most of it is four rules you already half-know. The trouble starts at the edges, where somebody gets cut off, or an action lands mid-line, or one speech runs past a paragraph.
The four rules that cover most lines
The ordinary case is not what sends you to a search box. Quotation marks go round the words that are spoken, a new speaker gets a new paragraph, the tag sits outside the marks, and where a full stop would end the speech you put a comma and let the tag finish the sentence.
What sends you here is the edge: an action arriving mid-line, one character talking over another, a speech long enough to need a second paragraph, somebody quoting somebody else inside their own speech. How to format dialogue in a story comes down to those four.
Ursula Le Guin, in Steering the Craft, says punctuation tells the reader how to hear you. In dialogue the marks are doing a second job as well, because they also say who is speaking and when a voice has stopped, so one wrong mark makes a reader go back and re-run the line to work out who said what.
So the rules below are grouped by case. A numbered list is easy to write and hard to use, because when you are stuck you are stuck on a situation. What the line should be doing is a separate craft question.
Single quotes vs double quotes
The mark is the one thing that changes between markets. American publishing sets speech in double marks. British publishing has used single, though double is now common.
| Situation | US convention | UK convention |
|---|---|---|
| Ordinary speech | Double marks | Single marks, or double |
| A quotation inside speech | Single inside the double | Double inside the single |
| Comma or full stop ending the speech | Inside the closing mark | Inside the closing mark |
| A comma belonging to the sentence, not the speech | Inside the closing mark | Outside the closing mark |
| Title of a short story or poem | Double marks | Single marks |
Rows one, two and five are one rule carrying a different default mark, and row four is a different rule altogether, the only place the two systems genuinely part company.
Formatting dialogue, in three cases
These three decide the shape on the page. The marks inside the line come next.
A new speaker takes a new paragraph
One rule doing two jobs. It separates the voices, and it lets you drop tags for a run of lines because the reader counts paragraphs. A two-hander can run half a page with no attribution and stay clear about who is speaking.
The speaker's action belongs in their paragraph
If Ida speaks and Ronan sets down a cup, that cup goes in a new paragraph. Put it with Ida's line and Ida set it down. Readers rarely catch this as an error. They catch that the scene has lost focus.
One speaker across two paragraphs
When a speech needs a paragraph break, open the second paragraph with a quotation mark and leave the first without a closing one. The missing mark signals that the voice has not stopped. It looks like a typo. It is not.
One exchange, marked up
Six lines carrying six cases at once.
"You went to the house," Ida said. "On Tuesday."
"I went past it." Ronan set the cup down without drinking. "There is a difference."
"Tell me what the difference is, because I have been standing in this kitchen for an hour working it out on my own and I have not got there.
"And do not tell me you were driving to the yard. The yard is the other way."
"I was going to say--"
"I know what you were going to say," she said, "because you have said it before."
- Comma, not full stop
- A finished sentence still takes a comma, because the tag ends it. That is how to punctuate dialogue running on into a tag. The comma sits inside the closing mark.
- An action beat is not a tag
- Setting a cup down is not a way of saying words, so it gets its own sentence. That is what is wrong with "I went past it," he shrugged.
- No closing mark
- Ida is still talking, so the paragraph does not close. A reader who knows the convention reads straight on, and so does one who does not, because the next paragraph opens with a mark and gives no name.
- Opening mark, second paragraph
- The second paragraph opens with a mark and closes normally, because she stops here.
- Cut off, not trailing away
- The double hyphen means the line was taken from him. Three dots would mean he ran out on his own.
- Lower case after the tag
- The tag splits one sentence, so the second half opens in lower case, and a capital there would make it two sentences and move where she breathes.
Dialogue punctuation, in three cases
Where the marks go, and what the reader hears.
Comma before a tag, full stop before an action
"I went past it," he said takes the comma. "I went past it." He set the cup down takes the full stop. A question mark replaces the comma and the tag still opens in lower case. Are the words that follow a way of saying it? Said and whispered are. Smiled and shrugged are not. Which verb to reach for is the dialogue tags question, not this one.
The mark goes inside the closing quote
Commas and full stops belonging to the speech sit inside the closing mark, in American and British fiction alike. The most asked question here has a one-word answer. Inside.
Trailing off and being cut off
Three dots for a voice that fades. A double hyphen for one that is stopped. Writers treat these as interchangeable and readers do not, which is why an interrupted character can read as merely vague.
The same cases in four novels
Passages checked against the source texts.
1Being cut off
A double hyphen inside the closing mark
Jim does not trail away. He is stopped, and Stevenson marks it inside the quotation rather than after.
Try this. Find an interrupted line. If the other speaker took it, use a double hyphen.
"Sir," said I, "it is for yourself I mean. The captain is not what he used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman--""Come, now, march," interrupted he.
2An action beat in the middle
Speech, a sentence of action, then speech again
The gesture runs into the tag because he does it while speaking. Wharton opens the second half as a fresh sentence, which gives the pause its length.
Try this. Replace a tag with an action, and check the comma became a full stop.
"I had just finished reading the Times," he said, laying his long finger-tips together. "In town my mornings are so much occupied that I find it more convenient to read the newspapers after luncheon."
3A tag splitting one sentence
Speech resumes in lower case
The lower-case "when" is the whole signal. Twain puts the tag where a speaker draws breath, making it a decision about rhythm.
Try this. Move a tag into the middle of a line. Keep the version that breaks where a speaker would.
"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?"
4A quotation inside speech
Single marks inside double, both visible in one line
Mina is quoting Van Helsing's command back at him, so his words take the inner marks and hers keep the outer. Stoker needs the distinction more than most, because his novel is told through documents.
Try this. Where a character repeats somebody, put those words in the inner marks.
I know nothing, only that I was lying here, half asleep, and heard you say 'go on! speak, I command you!' It seemed so funny to hear you order me about, as if I were a bad child!
What to type in a manuscript
This page sets every example with straight marks and a double hyphen, the typewriter convention and still the safe one. Your word processor will probably convert both as you type, and no agent minds.
Mixing them is what shows. Curly marks in chapter one and straight marks in chapter nine tell an editor how the file was assembled.
Type the three dots as three full stops rather than the single ellipsis character. Then double-space the file, indent every paragraph through your paragraph settings rather than the tab key, and use one space after a stop. Manuscript format has the rest of it.
A formatted passage with an editor on it
The same exchange, punctuated wrongly. The note is from Elena Cruz, a line editor inside Prosematter.
Drag to compare original and revised text
Questions & Answers
- What are the seven rules of dialogue?
- Four cover most lines: marks round the spoken words, a new paragraph per speaker, a comma where a tag follows, and the tag in lower case outside the marks. The other three are speaker actions in their own paragraph, an opening mark with no closing one across a break, and single marks inside double for a quotation.
- Do you put a comma or a full stop before the closing quotation mark?
- A comma if a dialogue tag follows, a full stop if the next words are an action. Either way the mark sits inside the closing mark in fiction. The test is whether the words after the speech are a way of saying it.
- Do you indent dialogue?
- Yes, on the same terms as any other paragraph, and through your word processor's paragraph settings rather than the tab key. A chapter's first paragraph is usually flush left. The indent is a manuscript convention and says nothing about the typesetting.
- Are books double spaced?
- Manuscripts are, printed books are not. Double spacing leaves an editor room to write between the lines, and says nothing about how the finished book gets set. Keep the file double-spaced until somebody asks otherwise.
- Do you put thoughts in quotation marks?
- Usually not. Direct thought is most often set in italics with no marks, or in plain roman when the viewpoint is close enough that the reader knows whose head they are in. There are five ways to render a thought, and quotation marks is the one to avoid.
- When do you use single quotation marks?
- In American convention, for a quotation inside speech. In British convention they are often the outer marks, with double doing the nesting. A manuscript that switches halfway is the version an editor notices.
Get the mechanics read before an agent does
Paste a scene into Prosematter and pick a line editor. You get the punctuation notes and the reason behind each one.
Read a sceneÖffne ein Kapitel. Alles, was dazugehört, liegt schon daneben.
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