Basic dialogue punctuation

I often find myself giving lessons in punctuating dialogue. I do know of some helpful sites that I refer writers to, but I thought I would make a page explaining the basics as simply as possible.

When to use a comma followed by lowercase

Do this when the following copy is a dialogue tag. A dialogue tag is a word that clearly indicates spoken speech, like “said” and “asked”.

Examples

“Hello,” said Cate.

“Hello,” Cate said.

What if I use a question mark or exclamation point?

The lowercase rule still applies for dialogue tags.

Examples

“Who are you?” she asked.

“No!” said Cate.

When to use a full stop (period) followed by uppercase

This is needed for action beats. You cannot “smile”, “sigh”, “laugh” or otherwise speak a sentence via an action.

Examples

“You’re kidding me.” She laughed.

“You’re kidding me.” She sighed.

But I want readers to know that is how they are speaking

Easy, just add a dialogue tag with the action beat.

Example

“You’re kidding me,” she said with a laugh.

“You’re kidding me,” she said with a sigh.

Starting to get a bit fancy

Action in dialogue

You can include an action beat in dialogue by using dashes. This is either an unspaced em dash, or a spaced en dash.

Examples

“I don’t want to”—Cate picked up the pen—“but I’ll sign."

“I don’t want to” – Cate picked up the pen – “but I’ll sign."

Pauses and trailing off

And pauses and trailing off speech is indicated by ellipses. These are spaced.

Examples

“I … I … don’t know.”

“Well, if that’s the case …”

NB: In trailing speech no space after the ellipsis.

Interruptions

And for speech interrupted, it’s back to the trusty dash.

Example

“But, you said—"

"No I didn't!"

Top tip

Ignore what your English teacher told you about varying your dialogue tags. The simple dialogue tag “said” is innocuous and virtually invisible. Read a page with dialogue using “said” as a tag; can you recall how many times you saw it? Nup, you can’t.

BUT, read a page where the characters have variously “opined”, “demanded”, “declared”, “chastised” and lordy knows what other tags have been used under the advice of the common or garden English teacher, and the reader will notice them and will be dragged out of your narrative.