1. Enclose the spoken words with double quotation marks.
“I love it when that happens.”
2. Dialogue tags (the he asked/she said portions) stay outside the quotes and
get separated by a comma.
Sam said, “I’ll never do that again.”
“Don’t be a sissy,” said Bill. “Let’s get back in line and ride this beast again.”
Note: When dialogue ends in a question or exclamation mark, tags that follow start in lower case.
“What’s new?” she asked.
3. Actions that occur before or after the dialogue go in a separate sentence.
For example, if Cindi screamed and then spoke, you write it this way:
Cindi screamed. “Oh my God!”
On the other hand, if Cindi screamed out the words, use a comma instead of a period (so that it’s all
part of the same sentence).
Cindi screamed, “Oh my God!”
4. Punctuation goes inside the quotes.
Mary covered her mouth. “Oh no!” She looked like she had seen a vampire. “Did you see that?”
5. If you have to quote something within the dialogue, use single quotation
marks.
Note: Brits reverse the use of double and single quotes.
Bill laughed and pointed at him. “When that ghost jumped out and said, ‘Boo!’ you screamed like a
little girl.”
6. Start a new paragraph every time you change speakers.
If the speaker performs actions linked to the dialogue, keep everything in the same paragraph.
7. If an action interrupts a sentence in the dialogue, use lower case on the first
letter of the second fragment.
“I know,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “what you said.”