Okay, in the last blog we talked about how leading dialog tags will always have a comma after them, then the quote/spoken part, with full punctuation just like they were not inside quotes.
For example:
He said, “Blah.”
She exclaimed, “Blah!”
George asked, “Blah?”
After the tag but before the quote, you will always separate the dialog tag from the dialog itself.
Now, what happens when the dialog is at the end of the quote instead of before it is a bit different.
For end of speaking dialog tags, there are two different ways to handle this, and there’s really no rule that makes sense to remember this except to just remember it, I’m afraid.
When the speaking occurs before a tag, the punctuation will either be a comma (in place of a period) or an exclamation point or question mark.
Here’s how the same sentences above would look if the speaking tag came at the end instead of the beginning:
“Blah,” he said.
“Blah!” she exclaimed.
“Blah?” George asked.
Let’s look at the first one:
“Blah,” he said.
Okay, without the speaking tag, this would be written: “Blah.”
With the dialog tag, we remove the period and replace it with a comma, add the dialog tag at the end, and then end the entire sentence with a period. The entire sentence ends with a period because that is the normal punctuation for a non-spoken, non-question, non-exclamation sentence.
Now, the next two examples are a bit trickier, and this is where I constantly see errors. When a punctuation is required other than a period for the speaking portion, the part in the quotes, you have to use that punctuation at the end of the spoken part, not at the end of the entire sentence.
“Blah!”
“Blah?”
If you were to write these two sentences without dialog tags, the above is how they would appear.
When adding the dialog tag to these two punctuation types, you do NOT replace them with a comma, but rather leave them alone.
WRONG: “Blah,” she exclaimed!
WRONG: “Blah,” she asked?
See, ONLY the speaking part is the exclamation or the questions, not the entire sentence, so it’s important to keep the punctuation marks that denote HOW something is said with the part that is actually spoken, as mentioned in the other blog, punctuate within the quotes just like a regularly sentence would be if outside of quotes.
However, just because the punctuation is the same inside the quotes doesn’t mean the sentence itself has come to an end. Remember, when you are punctuating dialog, you have to have the end of speaking sentence punctuated (with a comma for a period, or an exclamation point or question mark), but then you also have to end the entire sentence with punctuation too, almost always a period.
One last note, when you use an exclamation point of a question mark inside the quotes of dialog, it is important that the dialog tag following it NOT start with a capital letter:
WRONG: “Blah!” She said.
RIGHT: “Blah!” she said.
The rule is simple on this: capital letters are used for the first letter of a sentence, proper names, acronyms, or for title case in a title or heading. They are not to be used in the middle of a sentence, even after dialog that uses an end of sentence punctuation inside the quotes.
The problem with this is if you are using a word processor, like MS Word or Word Perfect, you will likely have the program set to auto-correct, and unfortunately, these programs are not smart enough to realize the sentence has not ended. Be careful to watch your word processor and make sure it is not automatically capitalizing your dialog tag after the dialog when it should not be capitalized.
We’ll talk more about common problems with formatting and grammar that your word processor automatically changes for you in another blog, including commonly misspelled words that your auto-correct spell check changes on you too.
Hope this clears up dialog tags… any questions?
Love and stuff,
Michy
Keep writing!
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