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If you struggle with how to properly format your characters’ speech, you are not alone. I’ve copyedited hundreds of romance novels and see all kinds of grammatical errors when it comes to dialogue, speech tags, and action tags.
If you have a great copyeditor, you don’t have to worry too much about where the periods, commas, quotation marks, askeds, and saids go, but if you want to improve your understanding of how to punctuate dialogue and hone your writing craft, look no further than this post, which will serve as a clear and concise guide to the mechanics of dialogue.
Dialogue by Itself
The simplest dialogue to punctuate is a line of speech in a paragraph by itself, so we’ll start there (even though you will not have a line of dialogue like this unless you first have two lines with speech or action tags; more on that under When Not to Use a Speech or Action Tag below).
In US English (this post only refers to US English), we use double quotation marks for dialogue. All ending punctuation—a period (.), a comma (,), an exclamation mark (!), a question mark (?), an ellipsis (. . .), or an em dash (—)—goes inside the quotation marks. Just like with any sentence, a sentence of dialogue starts with a capital letter, unless it begins with an em dash or ellipsis.
Let’s look at some examples:
“I don’t believe a word you say.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“This is a story I was told in childhood. Once upon a time . . .”
“Hey, wait a minu—”
“—not what I meant.”
“. . . magic trick. Didn’t you see him put the card into his sleeve?”
Dialogue with Speech Tags
A speech tag is a short phrase that tells the reader who is saying something, such as “she said,” “Parker asked,” and “Geraldine exclaimed.”
If the speech tag comes before the dialogue, it starts with a capital letter if it’s at the beginning of the sentence:
He yelled, “Get it together, Maxine!”
She said, “I don’t think we are supposed to talk about that.”
Gripping my hand, he whispered, “I hope we get out of here alive.”
“Mark my words!” he shouted.
“I don’t know. Am I supposed to have some clue about this?” she asked.
“Put that down!” Amber hissed.
Trey said, “Check out this cool video.”
“Race you!” Trinity shouted, then took off.
“Are you for real?” Javier asked, eyes wide.
“Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Mason said and pointed to the stack of file folders.
“Wow, look at that view,” Anoki said dreamily.
Dialogue with Action Tags
An action tag is a sentence in which a character does something. The sentence is placed next to dialogue to indicate to the reader who is speaking. Action tags can be used in place of speech tags and are usually preferable to the reader, since speech tags can be distracting.
Action tags can be placed before or after the dialogue but should be in the same paragraph, and no other characters’ actions or dialogue should be in that paragraph (also see Where to Break Paragraphs below).
Lucille patted her beehive hairdo. “I’m ready to go out on the town, darling.”
“Huh?” Jackson clenched his eyes shut and shook his head as if to clear it of debris. “You’ve gotta be joshin’ me!”
“The hope is that he’ll heal given time.” The doctor smiled, but the expression was too practiced to be warm.
Additional Tips
Interrupted Dialogue
Check out How to Write Interrupted Dialogue for a breakdown of how to correctly use hyphens, em dashes, and ellipses in your characters’ speech.
Quotes Within Dialogue
If your character says something that usually has double quotations around it, such as something someone else said or a song or poem, use single quotation marks within the double quotation marks. If the quoted item comes at the end of the dialogue, the ending punctuation (a comma, period, etc.) goes inside both sets of quotation marks, unless it’s a question mark or exclamation point that doesn’t belong to the single-quoted text. (If you read that and your eyes glazed over, that’s completely normal. That’s why you hire a copyeditor!)
“My favorite song to play on the piano is ‘Für Elise,’” Lakeisha said.
Will asked, “Are you sure he said ‘Trent’s gonna pay’?”
Lala gestured wildly. “And he screamed, ‘Mayday! Mayday!’”
Keep Speech Tags Simple
In general, when using speech tags, stick chiefly to “said” and “asked.” Why? Because they are almost invisible to your reader.
Other dialogue tags distract your reader from the more important thing, what your character is saying, so only use them when they are necessary for the story. A lot of unnecessarily complicated speech tags can also contribute to reader fatigue and lead someone to put down your book in favor of one with a more pleasant reading experience.
At times, you’ll need a speech tag that adds new information about how the character spoke, such as “whispered,” “hissed,” “shouted,” and “yelled.” These are okay, but don’t have your characters constantly whispering, hissing, and shouting!
When Not to Use a Speech or Action Tag
In most cases, you will need either a speech tag or action tag to show the reader who is speaking what line of dialogue. But if you have two characters talking back and forth, you only have to have action or speech tags for the first two lines.
Barnabus examined the map. “We should go east.”
“I don’t think so,” Desiree said.
“West? North? We have to try something.”
“Hmm. Northeast, I guess.”
Where to Break Paragraphs
You may have heard the rule “new speaker, new paragraph.” But many writers forget that the action tag is included in the “new speaker” part. Don’t mix one character’s action tag with another character’s dialogue. If you do, your reader can easily get confused about who is saying what.
Incorrect:
Rhiannon put on her bunny ear headband before turning around to shake her little white tail. “Like my costume?” Gia laughed.
“I love it!”
Rhiannon put on her bunny ear headband before turning around to shake her little white tail. “Like my costume?”
Gia laughed. “I love it!”
Do you have a question about punctuating dialogue that I didn’t answer in this post? Leave a comment!
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