How to Write Dialogue
A Dialogue Punctuation Cheat Sheet
Writing dialogue that introduces and builds characters and advances the plot makes reading your stories a lot of fun and more interesting.
Punctuating correctly and capitalizing correctly are essential to make any dialogue effective.
I recommend the following:
Dialogue Capitalization & Punctuation Cheat Sheet
- Always start a new paragraph when changing speakers. Never have more than one speaker in a paragraph:
- "Where are you going?"
"To the movies."
"Oh no you're not! You've got to clean your room first."
- Always make sure your reader knows who is speaking:
- "Where are you going?" Mom asked.
"To the movies," answered Linda.
"Oh no you're not! You've got to clean your room first." - Speaker tag following quoted dialog:
- "That's fine. Whatever you decide," he said.
"That's fine. What does she think?" he said.
- Speaker tag preceding quoted dialog:
- He said, "That's fine. Whatever you decide."
He said, "That's fine. What does she think?"
- Speaker tag between two separate dialog sentences:
- "That's fine," he said. "Whatever you decide."
"That's fine," he said. "What does she think?"
- or -
"That's fine." He said, "Whatever you decide."
"That's fine." He said, "What does she think?"
- Speaker tag interrupting a dialog sentence:
- "That," he said, "is fine. Whatever you decide."
"That, "he said, "is fine. What does she think?"
Dialog without a speaker tag, but with an associated narrative sentence
- Narrative sentence following quoted dialog:
- "That's fine. Whatever you decide." He shrugged.
"That's fine. What does she think?" He shrugged.
- Narrative sentence preceding quoted dialog:
- He shrugged. "That's fine. Whatever you decide."
He shrugged. "That's fine. What does she think?"
- Narrative sentence between two separate dialog sentences:
- "That's fine." He shrugged. "Whatever you decide."
"That's fine." He shrugged. "What does she think?"
- Narrative sentence interrupting a dialog sentence:
- "That." He shrugged. "Is fine. Whatever you decide."
"That." He shrugged. "Is fine. What does she think?"
- Dialog ending with an exclamation point, ellipsis, or emdash follows the same pattern as the question mark.
- When one person is speaking, and continues over more than one paragraph, don't put an end-quote at the end of a paragraph, but do put an open-quote at the beginning of the next one.
- "This is the first paragraph in a speech," Mary said. "It goes on for awhile.
"This is the second paragraph in the speech. It goes on longer.
"This is the third paragraph in the speech. Are we getting bored yet?
"This is the last paragraph in the speech. You end it with an end-quote."
