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We recently came across a book that was great in most respects, but the dialogue, especially concerning closing punctuation in dialogue tags, needed some work.



When dialogue is accompanied by a tag (such as he said, asked, answered), use a comma before the closing quotation instead of a period. If no tag follows the text, end the dialogue with the closing punctuation (period, question mark, or exclamation mark) to complete the spoken phrase.



"No, that would take too long. We should go the other way," he replied.

"Write what interests you,” she said. "It's the best way to connect with the reader."



But wait! What if my character is asking a question? Or excited? Do you still put a comma? No. There should only be one punctuation mark next to the closing quotation mark. And, if there is a dialogue tag following that quotation, you can use a question mark or an exclamation mark to function as a comma as the final punctuation mark. The sentence always ends in a period, after the dialogue tag, or with a closing punctuation mark without a tag.



"When should we start writing?" she asked.

"Now!" he answered.



It seems small, but it’s important, and we hope some of you found this information useful. If not, and you’ve already mastered this, congratulations!