“How do you format dialogue?” the girl asked. “How do you know whether to use periods or commas?”
“Well,” her teacher began, “you consider whether something is a dialogue tag—”
“What’s a dialogue tag?”
Her teacher smiled and said, “A dialogue tag informs the reader who is speaking. It can come either before or after the dialogue itself, but it is not a complete sentence in its own right.”
(Reader, you will notice three dialogue tags have appeared thus far: “she asked,” “her teacher said,” and “Her teacher smiled and said,” and the first two weren’t capitalized because they were continuations of the dialogue itself, sort of like how this bit of text after the comma is a continuation of this very sentence. The third example, by contrast, was capitalized because the dialogue tag began the sentence, then segued into the dialogue afterward.)
“I see…” The girl nodded, gaze casting downward as she considered what she’d learned.
“That, however, was an action tag.”
The girl’s brows scrunched together. “An action tag?”
“Mm-hmm. Action tags describe an action the speaker takes or perhaps an internal thought the speaker has, but, unlike dialogue tags, they are sentences in their own right.” The teacher paused, perhaps for emphasis, perhaps simply to let the girl process the new information. “They do not get connected to dialogue with commas.”
(Reader, once again you’ll notice that three action tags appeared in the prior section: one following dialogue, one preceding dialogue, and one sandwiched in the middle of dialogue. Note the lack of commas.)
“Hmm, okay. But what about—” The girl couldn’t recall the correct term and her question abruptly died on her tongue.
“Em dashes?” her teacher supplied, a knowing grin curving her lips.
“Yes! Yes, how do you”—the girl mimed as though she was grabbing a ball—“place them appropriately?”
Her teacher shrugged. “It depends on their function.”
“Can you—” the girl started.
“Give an example?” her teacher finished.
Once again, her teacher smiled. “I believe you, my dear, already have.”
(Reader, you’ll note that em dashes can be used to transition into both action tags and dialogue tags. If an action tag temporarily interrupts dialogue, as with the second example in this section, the structure is: “Dialogue”—action tag—“continued dialogue.” No commas, no capitalization.)
“I think,” the girl said somewhat petulantly, her hands coming to roost on her hips, “that you’re just making all of this up.”
Her teacher sighed. “Would that I were.” After some rustling, her teacher produced a link to a professional editor’s blog. “But I fear these rules come from The Chicago Manual of Style itself.”
“What’s The Chicago Manual of Style?” the girl asked.
A hollow laugh caught in the teacher’s throat. “For those of us writing in American English, it is both our guide and our shackle.”
“Sounds limiting,” the girl mused.
“It can be,” her teacher agreed. “But following established grammar rules can also make it easier for our readers to accurately interpret our stories, and there is something magical about being able to use these small symbols—little marks here and there—to make our voices rise off the page in precisely the way we intended.”
