Words, Curds and Whey

Daylight only becomes broad if a crime is committed in it.

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

Things I didn’t know

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

Okay, but someone please explain question marks when followed by a dialogue tag. How do?

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots till now..

NOICE. Can’t wait to use this

“There are two more ways"—she pointed to the blackboard—“to punctuate interruptions. One is with the em dashes outside the quotations marks to indicate continuous speech. The action occurs at the same time as speech. The other—” she sipped from a glass of water “—is em dashes within the quotation marks to indicate interrupted speech.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of semicolons; they work to keep two complete sentences connected,” she explained. “They can also be used for long, complex lists: for items that are long (and often complex) phrases; items that, like this one, have a comma-separated clause inside; and items that have their own lists of words, phrases, or other details inside.”