WRITING | ENGLISH
The Hard and Soft Rules of Dialogue
The confusing customs of quotations and how they vary between cultures
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There are few aspects to language that are more perplexing than getting our dialogue into working order. Complicating matters even further are the distinctions that persist between cultures and borders. What’s accepted and embraced in America may not apply in Australia and the UK, and vice versa.
While Americans use double quotes to differentiate their dialogue from the rest of the text, the British typically use single quotes. But when quotes occur inside of other quotes, on any side of whichever pond or ocean you reside, writers will alternate between the single and double quotes in order to distinguish them.
Sometimes, that may involve our sentences appearing as follows.
“I heard him say, ‘learning to write dialogue can be complicated,’ but I wasn’t sure if he meant it.”
That same sentence may appear in other regions: ‘I heard him say, “learning to write dialogue can be complicated,” but I wasn’t sure if he meant it.’
Making matters harder to follow still, the positioning of commas and periods also varies. In American…
