Never make a mistake again Punctuating Dialogue Never make a mistake again

Rule #1: Uninterrupted speech- Quotation marks at the beginning and end. “My mother was right. I never should have married you. You only ever think of yourself and I’m always the one who has to suffer.” “Oh, cry me a river.” “Peter and Esteban are joining us.”  Notice anything about the punctuation?

Rule #2: Keep commas and periods INSIDE the quotation marks!!! ⏎ “I do not know,” said Albert. OR Albert said, “I do not know.” Which one is correct? The teacher screamed, “Everyone needs to line up at the door”. The teacher screamed, “Everyone needs to line up at the door.” This is called a tag.

Rule #3: Interrupted Speech (Tags come in the middle.) “Fred, I want you to take that new truck back to the dealership,” Mary snarled, “right now!” “No way will you get me to,” Fred paused, “ return that truck.” Only the words spoken are surrounded by quotation marks.

Rule #4: Start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes. “You can be so cruel some times!” Mary wailed at the boy who sits next to her in science class. “Oh, I suppose you’ll go crying to your mother now,” Fred snickered. “That’s not the only thing I’ll do,” sobbed Mary.

Rule #5: When two people are talking you do NOT have to keep saying names. “I understand how you feel, alright?” Mary said. “You do?” Bill replied. “Aw, you know I do.” “I didn’t realize how much you cared about me?” “Of course I do.” “So you’ll help me with my project for school?” “Yes.” ⏎ Notice how I always indent with a new speaker?

Rule #6: Exclamations and Questions An ! or ? is placed inside the quotation marks when it punctuates the quotation. It is placed outside when it punctuates the main sentence. For example: I almost fell over when he asked, “That won’t be a problem for you, will it?” Did the teacher really say, “Finish by tomorrow”?

Rule #7: Exclamations and Questions When using !’s and ?’s in dialogue, be sure to properly punctuate the words following the marks. If the sentence continues (and they aren’t proper nouns) DO NOT capitalize the next word. For example: “Did you hear Mr. Marcoux?” asked Steve. “Watch out!” warned John. “I didn’t know,” he proclaimed. “No homework tonight!” Mrs. Tomao asserted.

Rewriting a Paragraph DIRECTIONS: I will show you a paragraph that doesn’t make a lot of sense because it’s hard to tell who is speaking at any given time. Rewrite what you see so that it becomes correctly formatted.

Hi, Emily said. Hi, Dan. Finally we meet. I’m Emily Hi, Emily said. Hi, Dan. Finally we meet. I’m Emily. Nice to meet you Dan said. Have you been waiting here long? Emily replied. Not so long. I arrived here a few minutes ago. Well, sorry I am late. I ran into traffic. Oh, that’s Ok. What do you want to do? I would love to get some food. We could go to the restaurant over there. Sounds like a good idea. I like Italian food.