An Easy Guide to Dialogue Formatting
It’s all in how you say it.
I’ve written a number of articles recently about how to use various punctuation marks, including commas and quotation marks. Now I want to explore one of the most important ways of using punctuation: to mark dialogue.
Dialogue is found in many different types of writing, but fiction is probably where the majority of us are the most familiar with it. Standard dialogue formatting uses double quotation marks (for American English) around words that are spoken out loud by characters in novels, or by interviewees in nonfiction articles.
- The Witch cackled, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!”
Magazines often use dialogue in the form of interviews, and until recently that dialogue was typically set off in the same manner as we see in novels and narrative nonfiction, with quotation marks. Print media, however, is being influenced more and more by the digital world, and it’s not uncommon to see dialogue formatted differently than before.
Such as with italics:
- Dorothy: Auntie Em! Auntie Em! Get Toto — it’s a twister!
Or with block quotes:
[These men] think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you’ve got. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a…
