Example 1: He could never say no to her.Sometimes a character will report another character saying a single word (for example, “yes” in “ She said yes“) but you don’t need to put that single word in quotation marks. Example 4: “I saw two puppies the other day!”.Example 3: “Do you want the ten-piece chicken nugget meal?”.Example 1: “Do you need to go to 7-Eleven tonight?”.Really big numbers are often written as numerals as well, since spelling them out would take a lot of space.īut generally, if you can spell out the number instead, do that. Some numbers should be written with numerals, including years, phone numbers, and trade names that have numerals in them. When writing numbers in dialogue, you can either write them in word form (like “four”) or numeral form (like “4”). It still is, so think of some other way to convey that information.” Numbers in Dialogue Writers sometimes slip an info dump into dialogue, thinking it’s no longer obvious if someone is explaining the info. “Another thing to be wary of, and something a lot of new writers fall into, is using dialogue for long info dumps. Maybe add some actions-what the characters are doing in this scene-or the thoughts of your protagonist about what’s being said. “Breaking it up into multiple paragraphs helps combat a tiring wall of text, but if you can write it another way, try that first. Think of being in a seminar where the professor drones on and on and you zone out and stop paying attention. “This type of dialogue formatting isn’t used often since a reader can get bored facing paragraphs and paragraphs of a single person talking. Only place the closing quotation mark at the end of the last paragraph when the character is done talking. But sometimes you may want to leave it uninterrupted.ĭo this by placing an opening quotation mark at the start of the dialogue and each paragraph of the character’s speech that follows. You can do this with a new dialogue tag for each paragraph, or with bits of action to keep the reader anchored in the scene. If a character is talking for a long time, you may want to split what would have been one long paragraph into several shorter ones. “Oh! I see now!” Multiple Paragraph Dialogue “This is how it’s done,” he said, pushing the notebook to her side of the table. If Character 1 says something, Character 2 shouldn’t perform an action in the same paragraph. If more than one character is speaking, each character’s speech should start a new line. In dialogue, the beginning of a sentence should always be capitalized, regardless of the punctuation before it.Įxample: He turned his canvas around, asking, “What do you think?” New Character, New Paragraph “You haven’t…” he trailed off in disbelief. Whether the dialogue ends in a period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, or ellipsis, it should be inside the quotation marks. We’re in the same class!” Punctuation Inside Quotation Marks “He said to ‘never look at her again!’ as if it’s so easy. If a character quotes someone else in their speech, use single quotation marks for that quote within their double quotation marks.Įxample: “Can you believe John yelled at me?” Ted asked. When a character is speaking, enclose their speech in double quotation marks. General Rules for Formatting Dialogueīelow are some general rules for formatting and punctuating dialogue. That is the style we will be following in this post. However, most US publishing companies follow The Chicago Manual of Style, and so most books printed in English do as well. This post will take you through all the rules of formatting dialogue, complete with several examples to show you what it looks like when done correctly.īefore we begin, you should know that there is more than one style for formatting dialogue, and which one you decide to use is up to you. And things are actually getting pretty heated-but wait! Let’s politely interrupt that conversation to learn how you should correctly format and punctuate that tense dialogue. It’s really a classic he said, she said–situation. You’re in the middle of writing a scene and your characters are talking to each other.
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