[Meta] Correctly Punctuating Dialogue; a Short Lesson from #

Hello everyone! Come in, come in. Settle in, make yourselves comfy. Today we're going to discuss *punctuation!*

Now, I'm not perfect. My proofreading skills are the worst and more than once I accidentally a word, but damn it, I try. We have a lot of really impressive writers on DPP too! It's one of the reasons why I really love the community. But there's something I'm seeing, again and again, especially as I RP with people. A scourge, you might say, a blight on what's frequently an otherwise good response or prompt.

Poorly punctuated dialogue.

It's by far the most common error I see, so today I'm going to go over a few examples about correct punctuation for dialogue! And I'm going to do it... by writing dialogue!

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"This is an example of correctly punctuated dialogue. The comma goes at the end of what I say, and everything is inside the quotation marks," she said.

"Here is another example," he added. "The first sentence ends with a comma, because it had a dialogue tag at the end, or the words 'he added.' But this bit of dialogue does not need a comma, because there will be no tag, and instead uses a period."

"This is an example," she said, "of how you should correctly punctuate a split in your character's sentence. Notice the comma after the word 'said' instead of a period!"

"This kind of exchange is why it's important to *always start a new paragraph when a new character is speaking,*" he stressed.

"Otherwise it isn't obvious a new person is speaking!" she agreed.

"Oh, look at that wonderful example of how to punctuate with an exclamation mark," he said. "Using it *instead* of the comma is correct, but be sure to *not* capitalize the word that would normally follow the end quotation."

"Is the same true of question marks?" she asked.

"Why yes," he said, "it is true, like you just showed us."

"I think we've covered all the basics of punctuating dialogue," she said with a smile.

"Indeed!" He grinned. "It gets more advanced from here, like how I didn't use a dialogue tag at all in this dialogue, and so I need to capitalize the he, unlike before."

"This sure is confusing sometimes!"

"Isn't it?" he asked. "You didn't even use a tag there at all, but I could still tell it was the female character speaking because of the way a new paragraph was started."

"Well, can we ask questions in the comments below?"

"You sure can! Take it away, you sexy octothorpe!"

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Thank you nameless generic punctuation characters!

Just like they said, if you have any questions, just ask them here! I will be happy to help you better understand how to make your dialogue cleaner and easier to read.

Thanks for reading and happy writing!

-- #