Written by essteemedia | 04 December 2006

One of the first things I realised when I started editing was that many people have no idea how to punctuate. And I'm not just talking about commas here. Those pesky things are slap bang in the middle of a paradigm change at the moment and there seems to be only one rule that applies to them consistently. What's that? Use them only if a misunderstanding will result from their absence.

Inside, the woman spoke to a man.

No, the big surprising problem concerns dialogue. I've seen things like:

"Is that the real thing"? he said.
"Is that the real thing" he said?
"Is that the real thing.?" he said.
"Is that the real thing - he said

And many more variations of it. And this happens even when the writer is reasonably competent in all other things. Obviously punctuating dialogue is a problem. So maybe now's a good opportunity to give a few tips to those people who are dialoguely challenged.

Always enclose everything in the quotes:

"Is that the real thing?" he said.
"It sure is," she replied.
He said, "I don't believe it. Shut up!"

Whenever you use a person's name during a conversation off-set it in commas. So:

"What is it, Rom?"
"Tell me, Francoise, did you see the man?"

Ditto for the he said, she said bits. Hence:

"It's mine," said Joe.
She said, "Take me to your leader."

A lot of confusion seems to centre around tag lines, especially when you want to give more information. But be careful that the added information is auxilliary to the dialogue part and doesn't represent a whole new thought. F'rinstance:

"Your brother has discovered something through that hole," he pointed vaguely in the direction of the cellar wall.

"Your brother has discovered something through that hole." He pointed vaguely in the direction of the cellar wall.

In this example the first sentence is wrong because the spoken word and the action are not part of the same continuum, so to speak; the action gives no indication about how the words were said or even that they were said, although we can plainly see from the quote marks that something was said. The second sentence is correct. the person says something then performs an action. You could also write:

"Your brother has discovered something through that hole," he said and pointed vaguely in the direction of the cellar wall.

Your brother has discovered something through that hole," he said, and pointed vaguely in the direction of the cellar wall.

"Is that as clear," the editor said, "as mud?" My preference is not to break up the dialogue unless there's some other point to be made, so: "Is that as clear as mud?" the editor said.

Check out a style guide. There's nothing worse than wasting an editor's time with silly punctuation errors that can easily be avoided.