by Mike Klaassen

Created on: February 16, 2010   Last Updated: March 05, 2011

Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, provides straightforward advice: "Follow the specialized rules of punctuation in dialogue."  But in the world of fiction-writing, "rules" vary somewhat, depending on who is dictating them.  And in some situations there are allowances for variations in objectives and personal style. 

QUOTATION MARKS

No fiction-writing mode is so closely associated with specific punctuation as is dialogue.  That punctuation is the quotation mark, but even here there is lack of total conformity. 

As noted by Noah Lukeman in A Dash of Style, "In some trendy works (and classic works, too) you'll find that authors opt not to use quotation marks at all, but rather to indicate dialogue with some other mark, such as a dash, or italics, or no mark at all (not to be confused with paraphrasing).  Presumably this is done for the sake of being different, but to my mind this is just stylistic, and makes it unnecessarily hard on the reader."

Quotation marks are easy to take for granted.  Fortunately for fiction-writers there are authors, such as Lukeman, who have studied punctuation and shared their thoughts.  "Quotation marks," writes Lukeman, "are . . . unique in that they indicate the end of one world (prose) and the beginning of another (dialogue), and as such are one of the most powerful tools with which to propel context into the limelight.  Indeed, to discuss quotation marks - their presence, absence, overuse, underuse - is to discuss dialogue itself."

The mechanics of quotation marks for dialogue can be a little quirky:

* A character's spoken words are enclosed in quotation marks: "Be careful, Black Bart is fast with a six shooter."  (note the period inside the closing quotation mark)

* If an attribution tag precedes the dialogue, separate the tag from the quote with a comma: Cisco said, "Be careful, Black Bart is fast with a six shooter."

* If an attribution tag falls within the quote, frame it with commas: "Be careful," Cisco said, "Black Bart is fast with a six shooter."

* If an attribution tag falls after the quote, place a comma within the closing quotation mark: "Be careful, Black Bart is fast with a six shooter," Cisco said.

* If an attribution tag falls after the quote, and an exclamation mark or a question mark is used to end the quote, place that mark inside the closing quotation mark: "Be careful, Black Bart is fast with a six shooter!" Cisco said.

A big exception

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