Grammer a Week 4: Dialogue Punctuation and Capitalization · 1:06am Feb 14th, 2015
This is Grammer a Week, the periodic blog program-thing where I address a frequently broken grammar rule and tell you how to fix it. This week's installment is about quotation marks. The rules for placing punctuation about quotation marks are complicated. Each of the comma, period, exclamation point, and question mark have multiple rules for placement. What's worse, those rules change depending on where you live!
Commas and Periods
Let's start with the comma and period, which are likely your most frequently used punctuation. If you're using dialogue and dialogue tags around these punctuation, there are three rules you should know.
1. When the tag comes first, add a comma after the tag and capitalize the first word of the dialogue:
Twilight said, "Stop right there, Rainbow Dash."
2. When the tag comes last, add a comma and the end of the dialogue and don't capitalize the next word (unless it's normally capitalized, like a name):
"Stop right there, Rainbow Dash," she said.
"Stop right there, Rainbow Dash," Twilight said.
3. When the tag interrupts dialogue in the middle and breaks it into two parts, punctuate as above, but don't capitalize the second part. If those two parts are in discrete sentences, punctuate and capitalize normally. It's easier to explain this case by example:
"I wrote my first book," Fluttershy said, "and I'm so proud of it!"
"I wrote my first book," Fluttershy said. "I'm so proud of it!"
Here are a few extra rules. If you're not using a dialogue tag to introduce dialogue, punctuate the sentences like you would any ordinary sentence:
Fluttershy was beside herself with excitement. "I wrote my first book!"
Whenever you need to use quotes and commas/periods together, the comma or period will always go inside the quotes: *
Trixie mocked Rarity's favorite epithet of "darling."
Exclamation Points and Question Marks
Exclamation points and question marks in dialogue follow largely the same rules as commas and periods do. Whether the dialogue tag comes before, after, or interrupts the actual dialogue, the rules remain the same. Yes, this can mean that a non-capitalized word will follow an exclamation point or question mark. It's still correct in this case:
Twilight said, "Stop!"
"Stop!" she said.
"Do you think," Rarity said, "that this color would go well with my coat?"
Unlike commas and periods, however, these marks can make their way outside of quotes in some cases. Whether they go inside or outside is up to the sentence logic. For example, place a question mark outside quotes when the entire sentence as a whole is a question, and place the question mark inside quotes when only the bit in quotes is a question:
Who said, "Love is a lie"?
Rarity said, "Is love a lie?"
* If you subscribe to the British style of grammar, the rules for commas and periods around quotes are a bit different. You would place these punctuation according to logic as well, just as it is with exclamation points and question marks. In the marked case above, the period would actually go outside of the quotation marks.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please post them below. I'm always open to suggestions for future Grammer a Week posts.
Heh; I was waiting for something like that.
The one I find catches people out is when I write something like this:
I'll sometimes get people "correcting" that to this:
but that doesn't mean the same thing. My original is meant to convey that she said those four words and then laughed; two separate actions. The "corrected" version implies that it was the four words themselves that she said in a laughing manner. Quite a subtle distinction, but it can be useful.
2794412 Yeah, you're right; it all depends on whether you subscribe to having "she laughed" be a dialogue tag or not. It's one of those few cases in grammar where both versions have different meanings, but both are actually correct.
I honestly think that the British rules for commas about quotes make more sense, but I abide by the US rules for grammar. They mean that I don't have to think as much. Commas and periods always go inside the quotes. Simple as that!
2794808 Interesting point about the status of "laughed". Some people get very worked up about sentences like, for example:
on the basis that you can't actually grin speech. Which is true as far as it goes... but one of the fun things about writing is first learning the "rules of engagement" and then discovering interesting ways to break them. After all, my most popular story (It Doesn't Matter Now) has a first sentence that runs to 78 words. You won't find that in any style guide, either!
2796304 . . . why oh why did you just point that out to me? Now I'm getting all worked up about something that I never noticed before! It doesn't look like an error, but it kind of is!
I guess it's a good thing that I tend not to use this construction at all in my own writing, but now I'm going to notice it everywhere and not know whether it's an error or not.
2797188 Join the club! :P I try not to think about these things too consciously when I'm actually writing, but of course when I'm reviewing I do have to do it a little more. (And sometimes it sticks: I had to push down a slight nagging about whether the preceding sentence should have had any more commas...
)
2797283 Y'know, I hate you so much right now.
Now I'm looking at your sentence and thinking the same thing! Let me break down this sentence and go all Grammar Nazi on it (at least, my understanding of it):
Oh gosh. All three of these commas are warranted in some way, but how would one punctuate it correctly? Putting all three in would be a form of comma abuse, but does the sentence really necessitate only one comma? I would think at least one more is warranted. Hmm . . .
This sentence is a compound-complex sentence in which the clauses in red are independent and the clauses in green are dependent. Given that clause "a" is independent, and clause "b" and "c" together make a full complex sentence, "a, bc" is a reduced compound sentence, and comma "0" is warranted.
"[B]ut" is the coordinating conjunction joining the compound sentence, and it's immediately followed but the introductory/nonessential phrase "of course." Traditionally, a nonessential phrase like this would be flanked by commas, but lumped in a complex (literally!) sentence like this one, both commas "1" and "2" should not be added. Traditional thought, as advocated by The Elements of Style and CMOS, suggests that comma "1" be omitted and "2" remain.
Comma "3" separates the dependent clause "b" and independent clause "c." In complex sentence "b,c" where the dependent clause comes before the independent one, a comma is warranted to separate the two. Thus, comma "3" is warranted.
In conclusion:
I suppose there is an argument to be had that comma "2" is not necessary either, but I do think that comma "3" is a mandatory one.
Why did you have to type that sentence?
Seriously! This is the kind of stuff that I get passionate about, but nobody else cares about it!
2797496 If it makes you feel any better, I agree with the version of my sentence you came up with.
Mind you, both the sources you refer to are American, so they're not always going to be ideal authorities for checking British English like mine. A good example is the subjunctive, which is much less strictly applied in Britain. Take a pair of sentences like this:
In my experience, most AmE speakers think the second version is sloppy; most BrE speakers think the first version is affected. I'd certainly never say the first version, though I might use it in writing in very formal contexts.
The reason that, as an Englishman, I consider the full stop (period) to go outside the quotes in this case is because I consider this a different form of quote. It isn't direct speech, but rather the naming of the quoted word(s). I might even go so far as to use single-quotes to differentiate it.