![]() ![]() ![]() The exclamation mark and the question mark are serving as commas. ![]() And as long as there’s a dialogue tag after that quote, whatever closing punctuation mark you use is an undercover comma. The long answer is: You only want one punctuation mark next to a closing quotation mark. What if your character is excited and you want to use an exclamation mark at the end of your dialogue? Or they’re asking a question? Do you still need a comma? The short answer is no. Let’s go back to putting the dialogue tag at the end. Said and the occasional asked are sufficient for the vast majority of your dialogue tags. “How about you?”Īlso be wary of using too many said bookisms (words like exclaimed or shouted). These words more properly indicate action beats, and they should be punctuated as their own sentences: This does NOT include words such as smiled or laughed. Then you use the sentence-ending punctuation inside the quotation mark:Ī quick note: the verb in a dialogue tag should be something you can physically do to produce words. In this case, the comma still goes next to the dialogue tag, just after instead of before. Take a quick breath but don’t come to a complete halt you’re about to find out who said it. The comma shows that the sentence “I like writing dialogue” isn’t quite over. When the line your character says is a complete sentence with a dialogue tag at the end, you use a comma inside the quotation mark and a period at the end of the dialogue tag. And when you have direct dialogue in quotation marks, you need a comma to link the quote with the dialogue tag. The dialogue tag is inextricably linked with the dialogue, which serves as the direct object. If you’re grammatically minded, remember that the verb in a dialogue tag is typically transitive. So how does this apply to dialogue? Dialogue Tags and CommasĪ dialogue tag is the few words before or after a bit of dialogue that indicate who is speaking: he said, she asked, etc. It’s a quick breath, then you forge ahead to the end of the sentence. Commas, on the other hand, indicate a pause in the flow of words without bringing about a full break. The sentence is over take a deep breath the next word will be capitalized and a new sentence begins. Your sentence-ending marks-like periods, exclamation marks, and question marks-show that a thought has come to a complete resolution. 3 So the comma was born! I found this great cartoon on another article on punctuation historyĪs punctuation developed, different marks came to indicate slightly different kinds of breaths. 2 As such, early writers began inserting marks in their writing to indicate where the reader was meant to breathe. Historians are fairly certain that most early reading was done aloud. 1 All I have to say is, thank goodness for the invention of the space! And my gratitude increases for the invention of punctuation. When alphabetical writing was first instituted, allthewordsweresquishedtogetherinoneunbrokensequence. Historically, most punctuation comes from the same basic idea. What is a Comma?Īs I so often like to do, let’s go back into history to better understand the comma. To answer this question, let’s first consider what exactly commas and dialogue tags are, then see how we fit them together. I think a lot of the confusion stems from one simple question: where the heck do I put this comma? And dialogue punctuation mistakes are very common. I’ve posted a lot about the big picture of dialogue before, but I’ve never gone over the formatting basics. If you’re writing fiction or memoir, you’ll probably write dialogue. ![]()
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