How To Use Quotation Marks And Commas In Dialogue
Quotation marks are for when you want to use someone else s words in your writing.
How to use quotation marks and commas in dialogue. Have you read hills like white elephants yet he asked her. For interior dialogue italics are appropriate just be consistent. The use of a comma is only exempted when you add conjunction before moving onto the quote. American english and british english differ in the way they use quotation marks. End with the dialogue tag to identify the speaker.
That is the biggest horse i have ever seen said craig. The quotation will end with a period. I put your keys on top of the dresser mark insisted. American english uses double quotation marks for quotes and reserves single quotation marks for quotes within quotes. All you need to do in this respect is place spoken dialogue within quote marks.
Commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks in american english. If a quotation extends to more than one paragraph do not use end quotes at the close of the first paragraph. This is my favorite dress said sally. Split quotations narrative element in the middle if the narrative element comes in the middle of the quotation add one comma to the end of the first part of the quotation and another comma after the narrative element. Question marks and exclamation marks sometimes go inside sometimes stay outside.
To signal a quotation within a quotation use single quotes. Below are a few ways to use commas and quotation marks in dialogues in a correct manner. Surround your dialogue with quotation marks and end it with a comma before the last quote mark. The most common way to indicate speech is to write dialogue in quotation marks and attribute it to a speaker with dialogue tags such as he said or she said or margaret replied or chirped hiroko. Do i really love her.
Add comma before opening quote. In british english the convention is the opposite. These are sometimes even known as speech marks as they indicate that someone has said something. This is what we call attribution when you re punctuating dialogue. In general you ll put most punctuation inside the quotation marks and use tags or the he said type of indicators to tell the reader who is talking.