Basic Rules for Punctuating Dialogue

In honor of last weekend's National Punctuation Day, we've been running a short series of posts on punctuation. JoAnn kicked off the topic by sharing some great links, one to a site I've never seen: Khan Academy. If you didn't follow that link and you have difficulty identifying run-on sentences, I encourage you to head over there as soon as you finish reading this post. Next, Carla shared a terrific example from her own work of how wise punctuation choices can help engage the reader. Before I wrap-up this series, I want to thank everyone who entered our giveaway of Cheryl Klein's The Magic Words, and to congratulate our winner, Cathy M!

The biggest punctuation challenge for my beginning students--both adults and children--seems to be dialogue. When I was a novice writer trying to understand how to punctuate dialogue, I studied examples in published works. Since I started out as a freelance newspaper writer (aka "stringer"), those early examples were quotes in newspaper and magazine articles. Later, when I turned to fiction, I modeled the punctuation I used on that in the novels on my shelves. Fortunately, they were all American publications, so the use of punctuation was consistent. I later discovered that British publications follow different rules, rules that are almost the direct opposite of ours. No wonder so many of my students were confused!  For a brief overview of the differences, see this page of The Punctuation Guide.

quinn.anya via VisualHunt.com

When I teach dialogue, I give my students a handout with some basic rules and corresponding examples. Here are the first three:

1. All dialogue should be set off with beginning and ending double quotation marks.

          “Come here, Lassie.”

2. Make sure you start a new paragraph whenever a speaker changes.

          “Where’s the barn?” I asked. “The river? The swimming hole?”
          “Oh, Sal,” my father said. “Come on. There’s Margaret.” He waved to the lady at the door.
          “We have to go back. I forgot something.”    

(Can you tell me what book the above example is taken from?)

3. If the dialogue is preceded by text, put a comma after the introductory text:

          Dad shouted, “Put that down now!”

As time went on, I kept adding more rules and examples. Then I found this page at The Editor's Blog. I've listed the site as a reference at the end of my handout so I don't have to update it anymore.

quinn.anya via Visualhunt

If you're looking for lesson plans on teaching punctuation, check out "And I Quote: A Punctuation Proofreading Minilesson" and "The Passion of Punctuation", both at Read. Write. Think. Both also contain links to additional punctuation resources.

To wrap us this celebration of National Punctuation Day, I suggest you read these Top Ten Tips at The Punctuation Guide.

Also, before you head over to check out this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Karen Edmisten's blog, you might enjoy reading these children's poems about punctuation.

And don't forget to:

Write with Joy!

Carmela

Reminder: There are only a few days left to enter the Goodreads giveaway of my middle-grade novel, Rosa, Sola.

Then BAM! Punctuation and Style

In this new TA series of punctuation and style, I thought I’d show an example from my book 

Fourth Down and Inches: 

Concussions and Football’s Make-or-Break Moment.  

I chose this for today because it demonstrates how to blend facts with punctuation and style to make readable and exciting text.   

The following passage is on page 41 of the book.  In this section I’m using a creative way to explain what happens on the football field when a player gets a concussion.  Before the reader gets to this page, I’ve explained exactly what a concussion is.  In this section I’m showing what happens in the brain when a concussion happens.    

FROM PAGE 41 OF Fourth Down and Inches: Concussions and Football’s Make-or-Break Moment (Carolrhoda):

The player lines up. He concentrates on his job. He anticipates his opponent’s move. His blood is pumping. The ball is snapped. Instinct and memory of countless hours on the practice field take over. Like instruments in an orchestra blending together to play a symphony, every part of the player’s body is working in perfect harmony.

In the player’s brain, one hundred billion neurons are sending and receiving messages at lightning speed to make it all happen. Heart beat. Lungs breathe. Pick up your feet. Move your arm. Look at the coach. Remember the play. The neurons transmit these messages through a long fiber, called an axon, that is attached to each neuron. This information moves down the axon through an orderly chemical process. When the message gets to the end of the axon, a neurotransmitter transmits the message to the next cell. And so on. And so on.

Then BAM!  An outside force causes the player’s brain to crash into the side of the skull. Then it bounces off and crashes into the other side of the skull.

The brain, which had been busily transmitting countless messages immediately reacts to this crisis. A chain reaction begins as chemicals in the brain move around in chaos. Message-carrying neurotransmitters are interrupted before they reach the axon. Suddenly, the brain can’t send or receive messages normally.

I intentionally chose this style in this section that is different from the rest of the book.  Here are some of the reasons why I wrote it this way:

1.     I wanted to grab the attention of the reader by putting them vicariously on the football field. 

2.     I wanted to show the physical and mental aspects of playing football.  

3.     I wanted to inform readers about the one hundred billion neurons and axons in their brains and how they transmit information.

4.     I wanted to inform readers that a concussion disrupts those messages. 

5.     I used a lot of short choppy sentences to indicate fast moving information.

6.     I used some sentence fragments to indicate many things happening simultaneously in a football players body.

7.     I used “Then BAM!” because I wanted to reader to make the jump between a brain working normally, then BAM, a concussion happens and the brain does not work normally.

Since we are looking at punctuation and style today, let’s see which of two paragraphs below is the most interesting.

WHAT I COULD HAVE WRITTEN:

When a football player reacts to the beginning of a play, neurons move fast through their brains to control their body.  Countless neurons and axons transmit messages through their brains. 

WHAT I DID WRITE, AND WHAT IS IN THE BOOK:

In the player’s brain, one hundred billion neurons are sending and receiving messages at lightning speed to make it all happen. Heart beat. Lungs breathe. Pick up your feet. Move your arm. Look at the coach. Remember the play. The neurons transmit these messages through a long fiber, called an axon, that is attached to each neuron. This information moves down the axon through an orderly chemical process. When the message gets to the end of the axon, a neurotransmitter transmits the message to the next cell. And so on. And so on.

Which paragraph do you prefer?  

by 

Carla Killough McClafferty

P.S. from Carmela: Don't forget: Today's the last day to enter for a chance to win editor Cheryl Klein's The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults (Norton)!

Punctuation! Punctuation? Punctuation.

In honor of National Punctuation Day, we Teaching Authors are addressing punctuation in this new series of posts. I’ve seen plenty of run-on sentences lately, so I thought I’d address them here.

This sign shows one of many solutions I’ve seen to the “How do I punctuate this?” dilemma: Do nothing.

Here are some helpful suggestions for what to do with a run-on instead:

• Run-ons - Comma Splices - Fused Sentences from The Purdue Online Writing Lab

• How to use a semicolon: The most feared punctuation on earth, created by The Oatmeal

• Khan Academy’s Recognizing run-ons and comma splices

Thinking about punctuation, I remembered Lilian Moore’s wonder-filled poem “Winter Dark,” about the punctuation she saw in New York City.

“Soon
there’s a comma of a moon...”

You can read Lilian Moore’s biography and watch Renee LaTulippe and Lee Bennett Hopkins discuss her life and work in the Spotlight on NCTE Poets series at No Water River.  (Scroll down to read the whole poem in the spread from Mural on Second Avenue.) While you’re there, be sure to check out the rest of the series!

Just for fun, watch Victor Borge’s hilarious Phonetic Punctuation routine. And don’t forget to enter our Teaching Authors Book Giveaway to win a copy of Cheryl Klein’s The Magic Words. The giveaway is open to U.S. residents and ends September 26.

I’m thrilled to be heading to Poetry Camp at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, where I’ll meet in person many poets I know only through poems and blog posts. And our own April will be there, too! Yippee!

Today’s Poetry Friday Roundup is at Reading to the Core. Enjoy!

JoAnn Early Macken

Happy Punctuation Day!

One of the most important punctuation marks goes about quietly, doing its job without any notice or fanfare. It’s also the oldest of all punctuation marks, dating back to ancient Greece. It’s used a thousand times in every book. As Noah Lukeman (A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation, 2006) suggests, “…it alone can make or break a work.”  What is it?

The paragraph break! 

Once upon a time, reading was hard work. There was no punctuation, no white-space, no lower case letters. There was nothing to indicate when one thought ended and the next one began.

Pilcrow symbol. Source at Image:Pilcrow.svg    

The pilcrow was the first punctuation mark. The word originated from the Greek paragraphos, (para=beside and graphos=to write). This led to the Old French, paragraph. This evolved into pelagraphe, and then to pelegreffe. Middle English transformed it into pylcrafte, and finally to pilcrow. 

Around 200 AD, paragraphs were very loosely understood as a change in topic, speaker, or stanza. But there was no consistency in these markings. Initially, some used the letter K, for Kaput, which is Latin for head. By the 12th century, scribes began using C, for Capitulum, Latin for little head or chapter. This C evolved because of inconsistencies in handwriting. By late medieval time, the pilcrow was a very elaborate decoration in bright red ink inserted in between shapeless paragraphs.

Villanova, Rudimenta Grammaticæ. Published 1500 in Valencia (Spain).. Licensed under Public Domain

As printing technology improved, and whitespace was deemed valuable in the reading process, pilcrows were dropped down to indicate a new line. Eventually the pilcrows were abandoned, and the paragraph indent was born. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that a standard method was devised to help organize paragraphs. Alexander Bain introduced the modern paragraph in 1866, defining it as a single unit of thought, and stressing the importance of an explicit topic sentence.

Just as a period divides sentences, a paragraph divides groups of sentences. But as the period is often hailed as the backbone of punctuation, the paragraph break is largely ignored.

The primary purpose of a paragraph is to define a theme, but there are no standard rules that dictate how that process plays out. Paragraphs tend to be organic, subject to the writer’s idiosyncrasies.

Some of us have quite a few idiosyncrasies. <See what I did there?

In a perfect world, a paragraph has a beginning, the main point stated in an explicit topic sentence. It has a middle, in which the writer elaborates on this one main point. And it has an ending, which wraps the entire package in a neat bow.

But the world isn’t perfect. Sometimes the writer places the topic sentence as the last line of a paragraph, playing “gotcha” like a punchline of a joke. Sometimes the topic sentence is a mere whisper, implied in the action. And then there’s the prankster, who places the topic sentence in the middle of a paragraph. Blink and you miss it.

morguefile.com

Further complicating the process, there is no designated length that defines a paragraph. I have some students who insist that a paragraph be five sentences, even when the concept is so complex, it demands more explanation. They call this being succinct, but when I ask them for clarification, it takes them several minutes to explain one sentence. I remind them, succinct does not mean short. Succinct means precise. Meanwhile, some students go to the opposite extreme. They turn in five-page essays that are three – and sometimes less -- very long paragraphs. Their ideas trample over each other, undistinguished from each another, in one stampeding brain dump. Both of these writer types reflect a common issue: they don’t understand, and therefore are not connected to, their own ideas. As Lukeman states, messy breaks reveal messy thinking.

The long and short of it (and all puns intended), paragraphs affect pacing, showing the reader how to approach the text. This is especially true in fiction. Short paragraphs tend to be action-oriented, focusing on moving the plot forward. Long paragraphs slow the action down, and tend to be reflective, either setting the stage for the next chase or revealing character. Too many short paragraphs strung together can wear the reader out. Too many long paragraphs put him to sleep.

So what do I do?

I begin with the basics. I tell my students, first, do your thinking. While everyone is entitled to an opinion, not every opinion is equally weighted. In fact, some are distorted, misinformed, and downright wrong. Next, organize your thinking. Only then can you write it down.  I provide a fixed pattern that the beginning writer can easily manage: 1. Write an explicit topic sentence; 2. Elaborate, in which you explain what you mean by this point, and why is it important; 3. Validate, in which you use evidence to prove that your observations are valid;  4. Illustrate, in which you demonstrate with examples how your observations can be applied in real world time. I compare beginning writers to beginning musicians. Musicians need to learn the notes and play the scales -- over and over and over -- in order to master them. Once they master these notes, only then can they play around, making their own music, and writing their own symphony.

But first, they have to learn the basics.

What do you think?

Bobbi Miller
 

WWW: Make Your (Punctuation) Mark!

It’s National Punctuation Day?
It’s National Punctuation Day.
I mean – it’s NATIONAL PUNCTUATION DAY!

(Of course, only a writer could so enthuse for such a day.)

As writer Russell Baker aptly put it, “When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly – with body language.  Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow.  In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language.  It helps readers hear the way you want to be heard.”

“How might I celebrate,”  you ask, “what National Punctuation Day founder Jeff Rubin calls ‘a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semicolons, and the very-mysterious ellipsis’?”

Well…I recommend the following actions: first visit the website Jeff Rubin created; admire each and every pictured punctuation mark and give it its proper due; next take this test to check your command of commas/apostrophes; laugh heartily while you read Lynne Truss’ EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES (Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference); and finally, consider completing my Wednesday Writing Workout which offers writers a chance to re-purpose the 14 standard marks of punctuation in English grammar to create original emoticons all their own. [See below.]

Enjoy!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.
While doing All Things Punctuation, don’t forget to celebrate your inner exclamation mark! J

P.P.S.
And for sure, don’t forget to enter our Book Giveaway to win a copy of Barbara Krasner’s picture book biography of Golda Meir - GOLDIE TAKES A STAND: GOLDA MEIR’S FIRST CRUSADE.
The deadline is September 26.

                                                  * * * * * * * * * *

Those Emotive Punctuation Marks!

I M J 2 B writing about emoticons – punctuation marks RE-purposed to instantly connote an emotion when communicating electronically.

Think:  little sideways smiley faces.  :)

I learned all about them when creating my baby board book TXTNG MAMA TXTNG BABY which just celebrated its first anniversary.

[FYI: it’s now available at Joan Cusick’s JUDY MAXWELL HOME and numerous copies will be raffled off at Northwestern University’s November 1 Community Baby Shower.]

The word “emoticon” blends “emotion” and “icon.”  An emoticon allows for a quick expression of feeling when the communication is electronic.

How might YOU (!) combine and re-arrange any and all of the 14 marks of punctuation  below to create an original emoticon?

 ?    !    ’  .   ,   “ ”   -   _  [  ]   ( )  …  /  :   ;

Feel free to use keyboard letters, spacing options and numbers too.  Turn them upside down and sideways!

Think outside the []. J

Play.

Experiment.

In other words, have fun!

Think, too, of any and all emotions/situations – Joy, Distress, Anger, Confusion, e.g.

If you need inspiration, click here to see more examples.
And be sure to share them with our TeachingAuthors readers so we can use them to help them catch on.