Fitting in dialog

[Patrick]

I'm never sure how to do this...is there even an accepted correct way of doing it?

 

Do you put punctuation at the end of the spoken sentence and then continue with lowercase? Uppercase? No punctuation at the end? Punctuation at the end only if question or exclamation? Do you use a hyphen between the spoken words and the follow up?

 

A few examples:

 

"It's raining." - he said.

 

"It's raining" he said.

 

"It's raining" - he said - "raining hard."

 

"Is it raining?" she asked.

 

etc...

 

Any suggestions?

[Akallabeth]

What I learned in school for basic punctuation for spoken sentances is as follows:

 

 

"It's raining," he said.

 

"It's raining!" he said.

 

"It's raining," he said, "raining hard."

 

"Is it raining?" she asked.

 

 

Do you put punctuation at the end of the spoken sentence and then continue with lowercase? Uppercase? No punctuation at the end? Punctuation at the end only if question or exclamation? Do you use a hyphen between the spoken words and the follow up?

When the spoken sentance is a statement (no question mark or exclaimation mark) a comma is used before the quotation mark followed by 'he said' or 'she asked', which in turn is followed by a period. If the spoken sentance is intended to have a question mark or exclaimation mark, they merely replace the comma.

 

Lowercase is used when the next word is inspecific.

 

examples: he, she, it, they

 

Uppercase is used when the next word is specific, or when the part following the spoken sentance is a complete sentance.

 

examples: "It's raining," Bob said.

"It's raining." He stopped talking and listened to the drops falling.

 

You have the question mark/exclaimation mark use correct according to what I was taught.

 

I don't know about hyphens. I don't use them for this purpose, but I know that what I have said above is for the very conservative writing of spoken sentances. I am sure that most writers are looser with the rules, especially in poetry/prose.

 

I hope that this answers most of your questions accurately.

Edited April 1, 2006 by Akallabeth

[Appy]

As far as I know, and that's about as far as the amount of books that I read, each writer makes up his own dialogue, but basically keeping to the rules that Akallabeth stated above.

 

As he also stated, most writers do tend to use their own way of describing dialogue, so for me, I use whatever I think is most powerful or useful at that moment.. hope that helped as well

[Patrick]

Thanks Aka and Appy! That clarifies quite a bit!

[Katzaniel]

A note on the separated-sentence one:

 

"It's raining," he said, "raining hard."

 

This is correct, but so are all of the following (if you felt like sprucing it up a bit):

 

"It's raining," he said, slipping on his jacket, "raining hard."

 

"It's raining." He slipped on his jacket, then continued: "Raining hard."

 

"It's raining." He slipped on his jacket. "Raining hard."

 

"It's raining," he said, slipping on his jacket. "Raining hard."

 

It's sometimes harder to figure out what to do with it when putting in two people. They always teach you in school that you should separate it into paragraphs, as shown:

 

"It's raining," he said.

 

"Raining hard," she added.

 

But I'm pretty sure you can also do these:

 

"It's raining," he said. "Raining hard," she added.

 

"It's raining," he said, and she added, "Raining hard."

 

"It's raining," he said, slipping on his jacket. She added, "Raining hard."

 

And I don't think you should do this:

 

"It's raining," he said, slipping on his jacket.

 

She added, "Raining hard."

 

unless there's a good reason for that to be a new paragraph, besides the speech.

 

Also a note about hyphens:

 

Most people prefer ellipses for interruptions, but I've never been satisfied with them - they never feel abrupt. I can't remember who I got this from, but it was someone around the Pen, I think: it may or may not be technically correct, but you can use a hyphen instead.

 

"It's raining really..." he started to say.

 

"Really hard!" she exclaimed before he could finish.

 

 

"It's raining really -" he started to say.

 

"Really hard!" she exclaimed before he could finish.