A great source of how to to punctuate dialogue is from theeditorsblog.net
They are calm and lovely and explain things really well.
But if you’re a little weird, you’re in the right place.
Let’s get started for this two-part podcast that we’ll finish next week.
And for a reminder: A dialogue tag is just the bits like “they said,” “she whispered,” “he yelled.”
Single line of dialogue, no dialogue tag.
You put the whole sentence inside those quotation marks.
“Shaunie is a cutie face.”
Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Period/Question Mark/Exclamation Point+ End Quote
Single line with dialogue tag (attribution) coming after it.
This time you put the dialogue inside the quotation marks and also a COMMA of MAGIC right before the last quotation marks. Then after the dialogue tag you put a period like this:
“Shaunie is a cutie face,” she said.
Why is this?
It’s pretty simple, the whole thing is a sentence, but it’s a sentence in two parts. Part one is the stuff someone is saying aloud. Part two is telling the reader who is saying it. It’s all one big thing and that’s why you don’t have a period inside the last quotation marks before the dialogue tag.
Whoa. Mind blow, right?
And that’s the same reason we don’t capitalize SHE in the dialogue tag of SHE SAID.
Quotation Marks + Capitalized First Word + Comma + End Quote + Lowercase First Word in the Dialogue Tag + Period.
We’re going to do just one more and continue on next week.
Single line, but you’re putting the dialogue tag first
So, it’s totally the same concept. It’s all one sentence, but this time the capitalization gets a bit wonky. You want to capitalize the first spoken word inside the first quotation marks and put a COMMA OF MAGIC right before it to separate the spoken words from the tag. Ready?
She said, “Shaunie, you are such a cutie-cutie face, my little coco-puff.”
So, you have a capitalized SHE at the beginning of the sentence, a comma at the end of the tag, quotation marks, then a capitalized first word.
Tag + Comma + Quotation marks + Ending punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark) + End Quotation marks.
WRITING TIP OF THE POD
Know your dialogue punctuation because it gets super confusing if you don’t.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
When you know the rules, when you know how to communicate your wants, you should be able to get your people to understand you AND you can understand your people.
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.
WE HAVE EXTRA CONTENT ALL ABOUT LIVING HAPPY OVER HERE! It’s pretty awesome.
AND we have a writing tips podcast called WRITE BETTER NOW! It’s taking a bit of a hiatus, but there are a ton of tips over there.
We have a podcast, LOVING THE STRANGE, which we stream biweekly live on Carrie’s Facebook and Twitter and YouTube on Fridays. Her Facebook and Twitter handles are all carriejonesbooks or carriejonesbook. But she also has extra cool content focused on writing tips here.
Carrie is reading one of her raw poems every once in awhile on CARRIE DOES POEMS. And there you go! Whew! That’s a lot!
Links We Mention In Random Thoughts
https://time.com/6115335/spacex-astronauts-200-days/
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/20/1057698279/cash-spill-san-diego–california-freeway
