Dialogue punctuation rules

Dialogue is where most manuscripts give themselves away, and it is a small set of rules that never change. The one that matters most is the difference between a speech tag and an action beat.

The tag comes after the speech

Right	`“I will not,” she said.`
Wrong	`“I will not.” she said.` The full stop closes the sentence, so the tag is stranded.
Wrong	`“I will not,” She said.` The tag is part of the same sentence, so it stays lower case.
Right	`“Will you?” she asked.` A question mark replaces the comma. The tag is still lower case.
Right	`“Get out!” he shouted.` Same for an exclamation mark.

The tag comes first, or in the middle

Right	`She said, “I will not.”`
One sentence, split	`“I will not,” she said, “whatever you offer me.”` Comma after the tag, lower case resuming.
Two sentences, split	`“I will not,” she said. “Not for anything.”` Full stop after the tag, capital resuming.

An action is not a tag

This is the rule that catches most people. A speech tag is a verb of speaking. Everything else is an action, and an action is its own sentence.

Right	`“I will not.” She turned away.`
Wrong	`“I will not,” she turned away.` You cannot turn away a sentence.
Wrong	`“I will not,” she smiled.` Nor smile one. Smiled, laughed, grinned, shrugged and nodded are all actions.
Right	`“I will not.” She smiled. “Ask me again tomorrow.”`
Beat first	`She turned away. “I will not.”` No comma. It is simply the sentence before.

Cut off, or trailing away

Interrupted	`“But I thought you—”` Em dash inside the quote, no full stop.
Interrupting	`“—never said that.”` A dash can open the next speech too.
Trailing off	`“I suppose, if you really…”` Ellipsis, not a dash.
Broken by action	`“If you would just”—she reached past him—“let me finish.”` Dashes outside the quotes.

Longer speeches and quotes inside quotes

Over two paragraphs	Open both, close only the last. The missing close is what says the speaker has not changed.
A quote inside a speech	`“She told me, ‘Go home,’ and hung up.”` Alternate the marks.
New speaker	New paragraph, every time, even for one word. This is what lets a reader follow an exchange with no tags at all.
Unspoken thought	Italics with no quotation marks, or roman with none. Never quotation marks, which say it was said aloud.

The small things

Curly quotes	Always. Straight quotes are a typewriter artefact and a proof they were never typeset.
Apostrophe at the start	`’Course not` takes a closing apostrophe, not an opening quote. Word gets this wrong every time.
Stammer	`“I d-don’t know.”` Hyphens, not ellipses.
Said	Readers stop seeing it after a page. A thesaurus of alternatives is louder than the dialogue itself.

Where the two styles differ

Only in the marks themselves. American publishing uses double quotes with single ones nested inside; British publishing often reverses that, though plenty of British houses use double. Everything above holds either way. The UK vs US sheet has the rest of it.

Galley curls quotes as you type, gets the leading apostrophe right, and its consistency sweep is dialogue-aware, so it does not flag a character's spelling as your inconsistency. See revision.

For reference, not instruction. Publishers, agencies and competitions each keep their own house style, and their guidelines win over anything on this page. Checked in August 2026 against the Chicago Manual of Style and New Hart's Rules. Whichever you pick, apply it to the whole book.

Questions

Does the comma go inside or outside the quotation marks?

Inside, in both British and American fiction, when the comma belongs to the speech. This is the one place the two styles agree. The difference between them is about punctuation that is not part of the quoted speech, which barely occurs in a novel.

When do I use a comma and when a full stop before the tag?

A comma if what follows is a speech tag, meaning a verb of speaking: said, asked, whispered, replied. A full stop if what follows is an action, because an action is a sentence of its own. Smiling and laughing are actions, not ways of speaking.

How do I punctuate an interruption?

An em dash inside the closing quote, with no full stop. Use an ellipsis if the speaker trails off under their own steam instead of being cut off.

How do I write a speech that runs over several paragraphs?

Open every paragraph with a quotation mark and close only the last one. The missing closing mark tells the reader the same person is still talking.

Single or double quotation marks?

Double is standard in American publishing and single is common in British, but British publishers vary and many use double. Pick one, use it everywhere, and make sure the nested marks are the other kind.

Dashes and hyphensThe interruption mark, in full. UK vs US styleWhich quotation marks, and where the punctuation sits. Standard manuscript formatThe page this dialogue sits on. Readability checkerHow much of your chapter is inside those marks.

More at the resources index.

Knowing the rule is one thing. Galley applies it across the whole book.

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