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Skills in focus:
Contractions
Contractions smoosh together two words and use an apostrophe to replace missing letters.
We use contractions to save time when we write and speak and to sound less formal.
If you’re not sure whether it’s OK to use contractions, think about your audience and what they expect to hear.
There is a limited number of accepted contractions in Standard English.
There are a few contractions that trip up a lot of writers because they sound just like other words.
Writing Dialogue
When you use dialogue in a story, aim to make your characters sound like themselves by playing with word choice and contractions.
Dialogue is great when you want to flesh out a key moment in your story, but reading a lot of dialogue tires your readers. So, don’t overdo it!
Dialogue should mostly be about characters talking about their different perspectives on the main question(s) of the story—not random stuff.
Formatting
Quotation Marks: Use double quotation marks to show when someone is speaking.
Line spacing: Start a new paragraph whenever a new character speaks or acts.
Dialogue Tags
A dialogue tag is the short phrase that goes before, between, or after the character’s words and tells the reader who is speaking and, sometimes, how they are speaking.
Use a comma before the dialogue tag when the tag follows the spoken words.
Use a period if the sentence of dialogue stands alone without a tag.
Do not capitalize the dialogue tag unless it begins a new sentence or the first word is a proper noun.
Place the comma or period inside the ending quotation marks.
If the dialogue tag comes first, use a comma before the opening quotation mark.
When the tag interrupts a single sentence of dialogue, use commas on both sides.
If the dialogue is a question or exclamation, keep the question mark or exclamation point inside the quotes and do not add a comma afterward.