“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.
Reblog to save a life
But doesn’t the comma come after the “ ???? Like “I’m alright, thanks.”, she said.
Nope bud. Well at least not anywhere I have seen.
Because it kinda breaks the flow of you wrote like that.
Hm. We learned it like that in school
You’re continuing the sentence, so you use a comma. “I’m alright, thanks,” I said. If you end the sentence, then use the period. “I’m alright, thanks.” I gave them a thumbs up.
