Even if a speaker only utters half a syllable before they’re interrupted by someone else, that half-syllable still gets its own indented paragraph. In English, dialogue is read from the left side of the page to the right, so the first thing readers notice when looking at a block of text is the white space on the left margin. [2] X Research source
A single set of quotation marks can include multiple sentences, as long as they are spoken in the same portion of dialogue. For example: Evgeny argued, “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner! You always give her special treatment!” When a character quotes someone else, use double-quotes around what your character says, then single-quotes around the speech they’re quoting. For example: Evgeny argued, “But you never yell ‘Finish your dinner’ at Laura!” The reversal of roles for the single and double-quotation mark is common outside of American writing. Many European and Asian languages use angle brackets (« ») to mark dialogue instead.
Use a comma to separate the dialogue tag from the dialogue. If the dialogue tag precedes the dialogue, the comma appears before the opening quotation mark: Evgeny argued, “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner!” If the dialogue tag comes after the dialogue, the comma appears before (inside) the closing quotation mark: “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner,” argued Evgeny. If the dialogue tag interrupts the flow of a sentence of dialogue, use a pair of commas that follows the previous two rules: “But Laura,” Evgeny argued, “never has to finish her dinner!”
If the question or exclamation ends the dialogue, do not use commas to separate the dialogue from dialogue tags. For example: “Why did you order mac-and-cheese pizza for dinner?” Fatima asked in disbelief.
For example, use a dash to indicate an abruptly ended speech: “What are y–” Joe began. You can also use dashes to indicate when one person’s dialogue is interrupted by another’s: “I just wanted to tell you–““Don’t say it!””–that I prefer Rocky Road ice cream. " Use ellipses when a character has lost her train of thought or can’t figure out what to say: “Well, I guess I mean. . . "
For example: Evgeny argued, “But Laura didn’t have to finish her dinner!” The “b” of “But” does not technically begin the sentence, but it begins a sentence in the world of the dialogue, so it is capitalized. However, if the first quoted word isn’t the first word of a sentence, don’t capitalize it: Evgeny argued that Laura “never has to finish her dinner!”
Use an opening quotation mark where you normally would, but don’t place one at the end of the first paragraph of the character’s speech. The speech isn’t over yet, so you don’t punctuate it like it is! Do, however, place another opening quotation mark at the beginning of the next paragraph of speech. This indicates that this is a continuation of the speech from the previous paragraph. Place your closing quotation mark wherever the character’s speech ends, as you normally would.
When you have a long dialogue that’s clearly being held between only two people, you can choose to leave out the dialogue tags entirely. In this case, you would rely on your paragraph breaks and indentations to let the reader know which character is speaking. You should leave out the dialogue tags when more than two characters are speaking only if you intend for the reader to be potentially confused about who is speaking. For example, if four characters are arguing with one another, you may want the reader to get the sense that they’re just hearing snatches of argument without being able to tell who’s speaking. The confusion of leaving out dialogue tags could help accomplish this.
Place dialogue tags in the middle of a sentence, interrupting the sentence, to change the pacing of your sentence. Because you have to use two commas to set the dialogue tag apart (see Step 3 in the previous section), your sentence will have two pauses in the middle of the spoken sentence: “And how exactly,” Laura muttered under her breath, “do you plan on accomplishing that?”
Some examples of pronouns include I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, and so on. Pronouns must always agree with the number and gender of the nouns they’re referring to. [10] X Research source [11] X Research source For example, the only appropriate pronouns to replace “Laura” are singular, feminine ones: she, her, hers, herself. The only appropriate pronouns to replace “Laura and Evgeny” are plural, gender neutral ones (because English loses gender when pluralized): they, their, theirs, themselves, them.
