Tips for Punctuating Dialogue

1. Dialogue begins with a capitalized word, no matter where in the sentence it occurs.

Trudy uncapped her pen and asked, “Where do I sign?”

2. Only direct dialogue, which indicates that someone is speaking, requires quotation marks. Indirect dialogue is reported speech, which doesn’t need quotation marks.

Direct: “She was a genius,” he said breathlessly.

Indirect: He said she was a genius.

3. When you have a single line of dialogue with no dialogue tag, the entire sentence, including the terminal punctuation, falls within the quotation marks.

“He wanted the best for you!” [In this case, the terminal punctuation is an exclamation point. Terminal punctuation could also be a period or question mark.]

4. If a single line of dialogue is followed by the speech tag (attribution), the dialogue is set inside quotation marks, a comma follows the dialogue and comes before the closing quotation mark, and a period follows the speech tag to end the sentence. Because the dialogue tag—"she said”—is part of the sentence, it is not capitalized.

“He wanted the best for you,” she said.

5. If the dialogue tag comes first, then a comma separates the dialogue tag from the spoken words. Note that the comma follows the speech tag and the terminal punctuation (a period in this example) is inside the quotation marks.

She said, “He wanted the best for you.”

6. If a single line of dialogue has a dialogue tag and an action, the dialogue is enclosed in quotation marks, a comma follows the dialogue and comes before the closing quotation mark, the speech tag (set lowercase) follows, and the action comes after the speech tag.

“He wanted the best for you,” she said, patting his shoulder.

Note that the action and the dialogue tag can also come before the dialogue:

Patting his shoulder, she said, “He wanted the best for you.”

7. If the dialogue is interrupted by action or thought and there is no dialogue tag, the spoken words are set within quotation marks and the action or thought is set off by em-dashes.

“He wanted the best for you”—she hurled her shoe at him—“but you never cared!”

8. Use an em-dash to indicate if the dialogue is interrupted:

Miriam scowled. “You ungrateful man! He only wanted the best for--” 

Jeremiah held up a hand to cut her off.

but use ellipsis points if the speech merely trails off:

“You know, he only wanted the best for you. He just . . .” Miriam sighed and patted Jeremiah’s hand. She didn’t know what else to say.    

9. Begin a new paragraph every time the speaker changes.

Murray and Tanisha stared at the waiter. The waiter stared back. Half a minute ticked by. Finally, Murray blurted, “You expect me to eat that?” He poked the iridescent gray-white blob on his plate with his salad fork. “Is this a prank?”

Tanisha shook her head. “There’s no way that’s edible. You should have ordered the salmon.”

The waiter rolled his eyes. “You ordered the chef’s special, sir, and that is the chef’s special. But if you want me to tell Chef Ramón that you hate it, I—”

“No, no . . . that’s okay,” Murray interrupted. He picked up his fork reluctantly. “I don’t want to offend the chef, it’s just . . .”

“It’s just that it appears to be trying to escape,” Tanisha pointed out. All three watched the blob as it edged toward the tablecloth.

10. Set off direct address in dialogue with a comma either before or after, depending on the position of the name or title.

“He wanted the best for you, Larry.”

“Baby, he wanted the best for you.”

“Chef, a customer wants to know why the special of the day is crawling off his plate.”