As writers, we love putting words in other people’s mouths – the mouths of our characters, that is. Mastering the art of dialogue is not as hard, nor as scary, as people assume. There are already several topics posted on how to write convincing dialogue ( Effective Dialogue , Dialogue , Narration vs. Dialogue ). This topic is devoted to the mechanics of good dialogue – a reference of the rules on dialogue punctuation.
Quotation Marks
The most basic unit of dialogue punctuation is the quotation mark (“these” ). They are meant to enclose dialogue to keep it separate from the narrative – it wouldn’t do to confuse your reader by mixing the two up.
They are very straightforward to use – simply put them around everything your character says and nothing they don’t. For example:Mark felt a need to defend himself. “I like quotation marks,” he said.
If you have large monologues by one character that take up more than one paragraph, there is a special rule. Your very vocal characters get special quotation mark treatment.
Every paragraph has quotation marks at the beginning, but only the last paragraph of the monologue has quotation marks at the end. For example, in the following uninterrupted monologue, only the final paragraph has end quotation marks:Mark started rambling. “I like quotation marks. They’re so easy to use, and they separate dialogue from narrative. They make your story easier to read.
“They are also fun to use in long monologues. In that case you can use them only at the beginning of paragraphs until you get to the final paragraphs. It’s fun because it feels a little like cheating.
“After you’ve written the entire monologue, you finally reach the end of the dialogue. That’s when you get to splurge and finally use those end quotation marks.”
There is a second kind of quotation mark that is often useful as well – the single quotes (‘these’ ). These punctuation marks can be used to enclose dialogue in the form of thoughts, whereas regular quotation marks indicate verbal communication. Sometimes italics are used for thoughts instead; this is also acceptable. For example:
‘Mark’s crazy for never using single quotes,’ Jillian thought to herself.
Italics are easier than single quotes, Mark mused to himself.
You only need to be consistent about which one you use for thoughts – if you use single quotes, use single quotes all the time. Consistency is 9/10ths of the battle, my friends.
Single quotes are also used if one of your characters is quoting something (a title, a quote, someone else’s conversation, etc) in their dialogue – you never use regular quotation marks within a set of regular quotation marks – wouldn’t that look just a little like overkill?
For example: “Twain once said, ‘I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.’ I agree with him,” Jillian told Mark.
“You just read that in ‘The New York Times,’ didn’t you?” Mark said accusingly.
Dialogue Tags
Dialogue tags are the snippets of narrative that introduce the dialogue and who is speaking, and continue the story outside of what is being said. They often include phrases such as “he said” or “she asked” or “they vociferously exclaimed.” Well, maybe that last one isn’t used often, per se…
There are really two types of dialogue tags. The first is a complete sentence of its own and is not part of the sentence that includes the dialogue. These complete dialogue tags are punctuated as separate sentences because, well, they are separate sentences. For example (dialogue tags in bold):
Nina walked into the room and stared at Frank. “I want to talk about dialogue tags.”
“We already are.” He said this in a tired way.
The second type of dialogue tags are incomplete dialogue tags. These are sentence fragments that cannot stand on their own and are part of the sentence that includes the dialogue. Incomplete dialogue tags are more common and probably more recognizable than complete dialogue tags – they’re like old friends, actually.
Typically, they include a verb (i.e. said, answered, asked, sang, yelled, cackled, etc) and introduce who is doing the action (he, she, they, Frank, the pirate 
etc). For those of you who remember your 8th grade English lessons, this means that these fragments have a subject and a verb, but lack an object; that’s because the dialogue IS the object. For those of you who couldn’t care less what your 8th grade English teacher was saying, look at these examples instead (dialogue tags in bold):“People always have trouble with dialogue tags,” Nina complained.
Frank replied simply, “That’s because no one remembers 8th grade English anymore.”
“And that,” Nina agreed, “is the truth.”
Notice that incomplete dialogue tags don’t get end punctuation by themselves – they are either introduced by a comma (as in the first example), introduce the dialogue with a comma (as in the second example), or both (as in the third example). These commas are essential – don’t forget them!
End Punctuation
End punctuation is the last punctuation mark in the dialogue (er…obviously
). It always belongs inside the quotation marks – this is important to remember. When you are using complete dialogue tags, treat the punctuation of the dialogue as you would any other sentence – if the dialogue ends with a period, use a period, if it ends with a question mark, use a question mark, and so on. For example:“When can I have a brownie?” Frederick paced impatiently as he spoke.
Gina shot him an annoyed look. “Not until we’re done learning about end punctuation.”
When you’re using incomplete dialogue tags, the end punctuation depends on where the tag is. I know – great, more confusion.
I’ll try to make it simple. If you introduce the dialogue with the tag or put the tag in the middle of the dialogue, the dialogue ends with normal end punctuation. For example:Frederick whined, “But I want a brownie now!”
“That,” Gina replied, “is because you are impatient.”
If your sentence has the dialogue and then is followed by an incomplete tag, then things get a little trickier. If the dialogue ends with a period, replace the period with a comma, like so:
“No, it’s because I really like brownies,” Frederick retorted.
If the dialogue ends with a question mark or an exclamation point, you leave the end punctuation intact. For instance:
“Do you like end punctuation with your brownies?” Gina asked slyly.
“No way!” Frederick exclaimed, disgusted by the idea.
Notice that wherever the actual end of the entire sentence is gets true end punctuation. There is a period after “Gina asked slyly,” for instance, because it is the end of the entire sentence. The true end of the sentence gets true end punctuation – shouldn’t be too hard to remember, right?
Capitalization
Even if you don’t remember 8th grade English class, I’m sure you all remember the basic rules of using capitals (and no, I’m not talking about Washington D.C., London, or Tashkent
). The beginning of a sentence is capitalized; proper nouns, such as place names, character names, and “I,” are capitalized. These rules always hold true.A second rule to remember is that the beginning of the dialogue is also always capitalized. That’s because your character is technically speaking a sentence, and sentences are always capitalized. This is true even if the dialogue is being introduced by an incomplete tag. For example:
“Can we talk about something other than punctuation for this example?” Marley asked.
Rita replied, “Sure! Let’s talk about homework instead!”
If an incomplete dialogue tag is used in the middle of a sentence of dialogue, only the beginning of the dialogue is still capitalized. For instance:
“You,” Marley said scornfully, “have a warped concept of fun conversation, Rita.”
Also, because incomplete dialogue tags are part of the same sentence as the dialogue they contain, they don’t need to be capitalized. The exception is, of course, proper nouns such as names. I doubt Marley would appreciate being called “marley.”
“Of course I don’t! My name deserves to be capitalized all the time!” he replied.
“You think you rate that highly?” Rita chided.
Complete dialogue tags are easy to work with in terms of capitalization. Because both the tag and the dialogue are complete sentences by themselves, they each are capitalized accordingly. For example:
Marley scowled at Rita. “But I rate higher than you, Rita.”
“Not according to the latest poll.” As she said this, Rita pulled out a graph comparing her ratings to Marley’s.
Wrap-up
“So what did we learn today, Belle?” Jamie asked.
Belle pondered the question. “Well, we learned about the two kinds of quotation marks,” she replied.
“And,” Jamie added, “we learned about the two types of dialogue tags, and how to use them.”
“We also learned a little about end punctuation in dialogue,” Belle added.
Jamie added quickly, “And a little about end punctuation outside of dialogue!”
Belle smiled. “True. We also learned when to capitalize words.”
“And when some words, such as incomplete dialogue tags placed after dialogue, don’t need to be capitalized,” he pointed out.
“Great!” Belle handed out Frederick’s brownies to all of the readers. “Now let’s go write some correctly-punctuated dialogue!” she exclaimed.
Adding your comment:
Technically, if you have a word that ends with a letter 's' and you want to make it possessive, you can either add just an end apostrophe (as you suggest) or add both the apostrophe and another 's' - both forms are legal and grammatically correct. 
Mike said what?? 
... even though that's really not to do with this column, I wanted to mention that 
