Denise and Louise talk about how to use question marks in fiction and non-fiction according to convention.

​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 1

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Listen to find out more about

• Direct questions
• Indirect questions
• How-to statements
• Idiomatic phrases and question marks
• Double punctuation
• Uncertain dates and date ranges
• Indicating uncertainty

Mentioned in the show

• But Can I Start A Sentence With “But”? by Carol Saller
• Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation by David Crystal

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Here's how to use quote marks (or speech marks) according to publishing convention in your fiction writing. The guidance covers both US English and UK English conventions.

In this post, I cover the following:

• What quote marks are used for
• Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
• Whether to use single or double quote marks
• Whether to use straight or curly quote marks
• Where the closing quote mark goes in relation to other punctuation​
• When not to use quote marks​

What quote marks are used for
Quote marks are used in 3 ways in fiction:

• Character dialogue
• To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
• ​To denote song titles and other works

Character dialogue
Quote marks show that we’re reporting what someone else is saying or said. 

​Each new speaker's dialogue should appear on a new line and include opening and closing quote marks.

To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
The tone of the distancing rendered by the quote marks will depend on narrative intent. Perhaps the voice is sarcastic. Or the author might want the reader to suspend belief by indicating that a character considers a word or phrase unreliable.

Imagine the character is saying so-called or supposed or allegedly before the word in quotes.

A word of caution: Don't be tempted to differentiate distancing terms in the narrative from dialogue by using an alternate style. If there are double speech marks around the dialogue, there should be double marks around the distancing words.

To denote song titles and other works
Quote marks are also used to identify certain published works such as song titles and book chapter titles.

So, for example, if a writer is referring to an album or book title, this is rendered in italic. However, when it comes to a song on an album, or a chapter in a book, it's conventional to use quote marks.

Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
There's one occasion where it's acceptable to omit the closing speech mark in dialogue: same speaker, new paragraph.

So, if you want your dialogue to take a new paragraph while retaining the current speaker, use a quotation mark at start of the new line but omit the closing one at the end of the previous paragraph.

​Single versus double quote marks
There’s no rule, just convention.

There are lots of Englishes: US, UK, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, etc. Each has its own preferences and idiosyncrasies.

Focus on which English your audience will expect, and punctuate your writing accordingly. Whichever style you choose, the main thing is be consistent. 
​

• In the UK, it’s more common to use single quote marks. And if there’s a quote within the quote, that’s a double. You might hear quotes within quotes called nested quotes.
• In US English it’s conventional to use double quote marks with nested singles. 

If you choose double quote marks, use the correct symbol, not two singles.

Straight versus curly quote marks
Curly quote marks are more conventionally known as smart quotes.

​It’s conventional in mainstream publishing to use smart or curly quotation marks, not unidirectional ones.

Changing straight quotes to smart quotes is one of the initial clean-up jobs an editor will carry out when they start work on a file. To prevent the problem occurring from the minute you begin typing:
 

• Go to FILE and select OPTIONS
• Select PROOFING, then click on the AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS button
• Choose the AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE tab
• Make sure there’s a tick in the "STRAIGHT QUOTES" WITH “SMART QUOTES” box
• Click on OK

 
If you’ve pasted material into your book from elsewhere, or you didn’t check autocorrect options before you began typing, there might be some rogue unidirectional marks in your file. To change them quickly, do a global find/replace:
 

• Select CTRL+H on your keyboard to open FIND AND REPLACE
• Type a quotation mark into the FIND WHAT box
• Type the same quotation mark into the REPLACE WITH box
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

The closing quote mark in relation to other punctuation​
In fiction, punctuation related to dialogue is placed similarly whether you're writing in US or UK style: within the quote marks.

Here are some examples:

​However, there's a difference when it comes to distancing or cited works. Note the different placement of the commas and full stops in the US and UK examples. In US English, the commas come before the closing quotation marks; in UK English, they come after.

When not to use quote marks
There are 2 issues to consider here:

• Thoughts 
• Emphasis

Thoughts
CMOS at section 13.43 says you can use quote marks to indicate thought, imagined dialogue and other internal discourse if you want to. However, I recommend you don't. For one thing, I can’t remember the last time I saw this approach used in commercial fiction coming out of a mainstream publisher’s stable.

But the best reason for not putting thoughts in quote marks is because it might confuse your reader. The beauty of quote marks – or speech marks – is that they indicate speech. Let them do their job!

Emphasis 
It can be tempting to use quote marks in your writing to draw attention to a word or phrase, but it’s rarely necessary and could even have the opposite effect to what you intended. It works instead as a distancing tool, as discussed above.

If you’re tempted to use quote marks for emphasis, imagine saying the sentence out loud, and making air quotes with your fingers as you speak. Would your character/narrator say it like that? If the answer's no, leave out the quote marks. Italic will work better. Or recast your dialogue so that the reader can work out where to place the stress themselves.

Summing up
If in doubt about how to use quote marks for your book, consult a style manual. I recommend the Chicago Manual of Style, the Penguin Guide to Punctuation and New Hart’s Rules, all of which offer industry-standard guidance.

Fancy listening instead?
If you'd prefer to listen to the advice offered here, Denise Cowle (a non-fiction editor) and I chat about how to use quote marks in all types of writing on The Editing Podcast. You can listen right here or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast platform

Round brackets, or parentheses, crop up less frequently than many punctuation symbols in fiction writing, but that doesn’t mean we must ban them. This post explores two ways to make them work effectively.

What are round brackets?
This is what they look like: ( )

They always come in pairs, and act as alternatives to paired dashes or commas in fiction. They have other functions in non-fiction writing but I’ll leave that discussion to a non-fiction editor!

​Compare these examples:

All of the above are grammatically correct, though paired brackets (like dashes) are stronger than commas, and more interruptive to the eye than both commas and dashes, probably because they’re used less frequently and associated more with non-fiction work.
 
Every writer will do well to ask themselves how their choice of parenthetical styling will affect the rhythm and clarity of their prose.

Every writer will also do well to ask themselves whether readers will be annoyed by them. Like serial commas, adverbs and the singular they, round brackets rarely pass a reader or an editor without evoking opinion. More on that later.

Brackets, full points and capitalization
Regardless of which English you’re using – British or American, for example – the rule is the same: 

• If the bracketed information is included as part of a sentence, the full point comes after the closing bracket. The bracketed clause takes a lower-case initial letter unless it starts with a proper noun.

• If the bracketed information stands as a sentence in its own right, the full point comes before the closing bracket. The bracketed sentence takes an initial capital.

Danger, Will Robinson!
Round brackets in fiction garner strong opinion, usually negative. 

The most-cited reason I’ve seen – and it’s a valid one – is that they pull readers out of a story. Given that there’s no reason on earth why you’d want to pull a reader out of a story, tread carefully.

Still, given that they’re not grammatically wrong, it’s only right that we should consider the ways in which round brackets might work in your fiction. The two I’ve seen most often are as follows:

• Satire – narrators poking fun
• Viewpoint shifts – narrators interrupting

Round brackets in fiction: Satire
For an example of how round brackets can be used for satirical purposes, we need look no further than Dickens.

In Our Mutual Friend (Wordsworth Editions, 1997), the viewpoint is omniscient. The scene is an ostentatious banquet hosted by the Veneerings. Dickens uses round brackets to set off narrative asides that poke fun at the guests and show them as the bumptious fools he believes them to be – and wants us to.

Here’s an excerpt from p. 11:

In other words, the crest is a farce.

And one of the diners, a Mr Twemlow, is obsessed over whether he is Veneering’s ‘oldest friend’, though he would never admit to being bothered by such a thing.

​Dickens’s bracketed snipe (p. 12) leaves us in no doubt about the man’s snobbery; it interrupts the dialogue of Lady Tippins, a frightful show-off whose ‘my dear’ sends Twemlow into a tizzy:

This approach is unlikely to find favour with readers who bought your high-octane thriller expecting a rollercoaster ride. The external narrator’s voice is overwhelming, and in most contemporary commercial fiction it will slow readers down, drag them out of the story, and infuriate them.

Round brackets in fiction: Viewpoint shifts
Take a look at this example from Stephen King’s The Outsider (p. 252; Hodder, 2018):

The brackets are effective here precisely because they’re interruptive. The narrative viewpoint in this section is third-person; we see the world as Holly, the private investigator, experiences it.

Given that it’s third-person, our finding out something that Holly hasn’t considered shifts the narrative distance. Such a shift might jar under other circumstances because it yanks us out of Holly’s head.

King, however, is a master of viewpoint, and he writes his characters with a rich immediacy. Still, he finds ways to introduce flexibility seamlessly, and in this case it’s with round brackets to introduce his omniscient narrator.

The parentheses allow an external narrator to enter the story just for a moment – an all-seeing eye that tells us what Holly didn’t think – but that voice is cocooned safely within those round brackets, and is gone as soon as the reader’s eye passes over the closing symbol.

King’s an experienced writer. If you’re not, I recommend holding a single character viewpoint and steering clear of bracketed interruptions from another narrator.

Here are four ways we could recast the King excerpt:

Round brackets in fiction: Dialogue
In Fix Your Damn Book! How to Painlessly Self-Edit Your Novels & Stories (Gift Horse Productions, 2016), James Osiris Baldwin advises never using round brackets in dialogue because they break ‘the fourth wall’.

What’s the fourth wall? It’s originally a theatrical term but in our case refers to ‘The conceptual barrier between any fictional work and its viewers or readers’ (Lexico/Oxford Dictionaries).

It’s good advice. It makes no sense to give an external narrator space inside a character’s speech. That’s why in the earlier Dickens example, the interruption comes between the speech-marked dialogue rather than within it.

Summing up
There’s nothing grammatically wrong with using round brackets. Stylistically, however, they could be a misfire. If you use them in your fiction, think care and rare: understand the impact they have on story and viewpoint, and use them infrequently.

Are your hyphens, en dashes and em dashes giving you the run-around? Here’s a guide to conventional usage in UK and US fiction publishing.

Terminology
Dashes are sometimes referred to as ‘rules’, especially in the UK. Oxford’s New Hart’s Rules (NHR) refers to the ‘en rule’ and the ‘em rule’ whereas The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) discusses ‘en dashes’ and ‘em dashes’.

​Both terms are acceptable but I’ll use ‘dash’ in this article.

A word on exceptions
Take a look at the likes of CMOS and you’ll see plenty of exceptions to the rules, which is why I don’t much like rules when it comes to fiction editing! What I’ve given you here is what I think you’ll need to know most of the time for most of your novel writing.

What do the dashes look like?
There are four dashes you’re most likely to use in fiction:

• Hyphen: -
• En dash: –
• Em dash: —​
  
• 2em dash: ⸺

Dashes that set off text and replace alternative punctuation
The EN DASH and the EM DASH can be used to set off an augmenting or explanatory word or phrase in a sentence that could stand alone without the insertion.
​
Brackets, commas and colons can act as alternative forms of punctuation. Here are some examples that demonstrate how it could be done:

In the UK, it’s conventional to use a SPACED EN DASH. This is not the law, not a rule, not the only way or the right way. It’s just the style that many UK publishers choose, though not all.
​
Here’s an example from my version of Stephen King’s The Outsider (p. 171):

​In the US, it’s conventional to use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH. Again, this is not the law, not a rule, not the only way or the right way. It’s just the style that many US publishers choose, though not all.

Here’s what King’s sentence looks like when amended according to US convention:

Some style guides even ask for SPACED EM DASHES, though I see this usage less frequently:

I recommend you stick to spaced en dashes or closed-up em dashes in fiction because that’s what your readers will be most familiar with. As for which style you should choose, think about:
​

• where your target audience is based
• what they’re used to seeing

If you’re publishing internationally, pick one style and be consistent.

Dashes in number spans
In fiction, number spans are often written out, though again this is convention rather than a rule that must be adhered to. Number ranges might make their way into emails, texts, letters and reports in your story, and they’re perfect for date ranges.
​
A CLOSED-UP EN DASH between number spans is standard in publishing, whether you’re writing in British English or US English:

Note that the en dash means up to and including (or through in US English). 

CMOS and NHR both recommend using EITHER the closed-up en dash in a number range OR a from/to or between/and construction, but not a mixture of the two:

Dashes as alternative speech marks
The CLOSED-UP EM DASH can act as an alternative to speech marks (or quotation marks) in dialogue in both UK English and US English.

Sylvain Neuvel uses this technique in Sleeping Giants and it works because the scenes in which it occurs take place in a secret location with an anonymous (even to the reader) agent running the interrogation. Each speaker’s turn is indicated with an em dash. The agent’s speech is rendered in bold.

​It can be an effective tool for fiction that’s dialogue driven – almost like a screenplay – but it gets messy when there are more than two speakers in a conversation, and becomes unworkable if you want to ground your dialogue in the environment with narrative (action beats, for example). And, of course, the dialogue needs to be standout because that’s all there is.

Dashes that indicate end-of-line interruptions
To indicate that a speaking character has been interrupted, use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH, whether you’re publishing in US or UK English.

Here’s an example from Mick Herron’s Dead Lions (p. 115)::

And another from Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot (p. 380):

Dashes for dialogue interrupted by narrative description
Dashes offer clarity when dialogue is broken by narrative description and the speaker hasn’t finished talking.
​
Here’s how it could be rendered in US English using CLOSED-UP EM DASHES:

And if you’re following UK English convention, use SPACED EN DASHES:

​
Notice how I’ve also used double quotation marks in the US version and singles for the UK one. Again, this isn’t about being right or obeying a rule; it’s a convention, and one that’s not always adhered to. Consistency is king.

​Dashes that indicate faltering speech
If your character is out of breath, taken aback, caught off guard, frightened, or nervous, you might want to indicate faltering speech with punctuation.
 
There are no absolute rules about how you do this; it depends on the effect you want to achieve.

If you want to denote a staccato rhythm, HYPHENS are a good choice. This works for sharper faltering where the character stammers or stutters.

If the faltering related not to letters but to phrases, you could use a CLOSED-UP EM DASH (US style) or a SPACED EN DASH (UK style).

Ellipses are another option. They're not dashes but they're handy for faltered speech that has a pause in it. You can use these with your dash of choice.

​Dashes as separators
HYPHENS are the tool of choice here. They’re short and sharp, and are perfect in fiction when you want to spell out words or numbers:

Number separation comes in handy when you want to ensure your reader reads the numbers as distinct digits rather than inclusively. Compare 1918 (nineteen eighteen) with 1-9-1-8 (one, nine, one, eight).

Dashes that indicate connection, relation or an alternative
We use EN DASHES in place of to and and/or to show a connection between two words that can stand alone and that together are modifying a noun:

Dashes with adjectival compounds
Either EN DASHES or HYPHENS are used here, regardless of where you live.
​
When one adjective modifies another adjective, these words create a compound. If this compound is placed before a noun, it usually takes a HYPHEN for the purpose of clarity. When the compound comes after the noun and a linking verb, the hyphen can be omitted:

Care should be taken, even in fiction, with regard to weighting. Let’s revisit the example of our polyglot Amir. Consider the differences between the following:

In the first example, with an EN DASH, Amir’s Asianness and Britishness have equal weighting. In the second, with the HYPHEN, ‘Asian’ is modifying ‘British’ and carries less weight. In the third and fourth, where the dashes are omitted, the weighting is ambiguous.

The dash of choice (or its omission) can tell us something about Amir’s identity – how he, or the narrator, or the author perceives this – so it needs to be used purposefully.

Dashes indicating omission
You might want to omit words, fully or partially, because they’re profane, or to indicate that some of the letters are illegible, or to disguise a name.

There are several options for managing omission: em dashes, 2em dashes, en dashes and asterisks. Spacing comes into play. There are different conventions for US and UK style.
​
NHR recommends the following for UK style:

​CMOS recommends the following for US style:

Summing up
Using dashes purposefully, and according to publishing convention, will bring clarity to your fiction writing. Think about your audience and what they’re used to seeing on the page, then choose your style and apply it consistently.

Consider, too, whether your choice of dash will amplify or reduce the significance (or weight) of your words when you’re using dashes as connectors or modifiers.
​
And if you’re still bamboozled, ask a pro editor. We know our dashes!

Denise and Louise discuss how to use quote marks (or speech marks) in writing ... and when not to use them.

​Click to listen to Season 2, Episode 10

Other ways to listen

Summary
Listen to find out more about:

• What quote marks are and how they're used
• Whether to use straight or curly quote marks
• Choosing single or double quote marks
• Where the closing quote mark goes in relation to other punctuation​
• When not to use quote marks

Editing bites

• ‘How to punctuate dialogue in a novel’: (blog) http://bit.ly/2vYflIf
• ‘How to punctuate dialogue in a novel’: (video playlist): http://bit.ly/2ZzUCXG
• ‘Worry-free Writing: how to use quote marks’: http://bit.ly/2ZyTzag

Other resources

• Chicago Manual of Style
• Penguin Guide to Punctuation
• New Hart’s Rules

Ask us a question
The easiest way to ping us a question is via Facebook Messenger: Visit the podcast's Facebook page and click on the SEND MESSAGE button.

Denise and Louise

• Denise Cowle Editorial Services
• Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Semi-colons are disliked by some, misused by others, and avoided by many. If you want to keep them out of your writing, that’s fine. In this article, I show you how they work conventionally. That way, you can omit them because that’s your preference, not because you daren’t include them!

What is a semi-colon?
It’s one of these: 

3 ways to use a semi-colon
There are 3 situations in which you’re likely to use a semi-colon in fiction:

Here, I focus on parallelism and clarity, but sentence pacing comes into play too – a useful addition to any fiction writer’s toolbox.
​
A little bit of grammar
Above, I mentioned independent clauses. An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. In case you don’t know what they are – and many writers know how to write extremely well without knowing grammar terminology so there’s no shame in that – here’s an overview.

Subject
A subject is the thing in a sentence that’s doing something or being something. In the examples below, the subject is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the subject of your sentence is, try this trick: change the subject into a question that you can answer yes/no to, as in the examples below.

​Predicate
A predicate is the part of a sentence that contains a verb and that tells us something about what the subject’s doing or what they are.
​
In the examples below, the predicate is in bold.

If you’re not sure what the predicate is in a sentence that’s a question, turn it into a statement, as in the example below. The result might be clunky but it’ll show you what’s what. The subject is in bold and the predicate in italic.

Independent clauses
Quick recap: an independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a predicate. The subject is in bold, the predicate is in italic, and the full independent clause is in red.

​Parallelism and the semi-colon
Take a look at these two independent clauses.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground.
• The gravel dug into her elbows.

The second sentence is related to the first because the gravel that’s digging into the agent’s elbows is what she experiences after falling to the ground. We can therefore use a semi-colon to indicate this relationship, if we wish.

• The FBI agent fell to the ground; the gravel dug into her elbows.

Note that the first word of the clause after the semi-colon does not take an initial capital letter.

Could we use a colon?
A colon is non-standard because colons introduce additional/qualifying information about the first clause, not new information. Think of the information they introduce as subordinate, if it helps.

I recommend avoiding colons to join parts of a sentence that are equally weighted.

Could we use a comma?
A comma is non-standard when joining two independent clauses. Sentences using commas in this way are said to contain comma splices.

​I recommend avoiding this usage.

Clarity and the semi-colon
Heavily punctuated sentences can be confusing and clunky. For the reader, it can mean limping through your prose rather than moving at a pace dictated by narrative intent.

​Take a look at this example from Mick Herron’s Dead Lions, p. 88. There are two semi-colons in the original version, but for this example I’m focusing only on the first (see the section in bold).

​The en dash in the first alternative version looks awkward because we already have two parenthetical en dashes in play.

What happens if we introduce a comma instead? The sentence is already comma-heavy. All we’ve done is bring in yet another to muddy the waters.
​
The semi-colon works best. It effectively links the clauses it connects, but in a way that subdivides the sentence clearly.

​However, pacing comes into place here too. There’s more on pacing below but, for now, compare the original and the version amended with a comma. The creepy voyeurism is starker when set off by the semi-colon.

​More on pacing and the semi-colon
The semi-colon is harder than the comma. It lengthens the pause or increases the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a comma, making them both stand out.

The semi-colon is softer than the full point. It shortens the pause or reduces the distance between two clauses that could have been linked with a full point, indicating a stronger, more intimate relationship.

Back to Herron for a closer look at the second semi-colon (see the section in bold) and some alternatives we could try:

​In the original, the semi-colon acts as a super-comma, subdividing the whole sentence into two more readable chunks.

However, more marked is the impact on the pace. The semi-colon forces us to slow down. That’s important because the clause that comes after it is about the denial of interrogations. The semi-colon makes us pause a little longer, which makes the sinister information that follows stand out.

Semi-colons and dialogue
Some authors resist the use of semi-colons in dialogue, usually on the grounds that the reader can’t hear the punctuation. Does that mean you shouldn’t use them?

A novel’s dialogue isn’t real-life speech; it’s a representation of it. Speech, like narrative, has rhythm. The writer’s job is to create speech that’s clear and well paced. If a semi-colon helps you to do that, why wouldn’t you use it?

Here’s a great example from David Rosenfelt’s New Tricks, p. 316:

Both versions work but Rosenfelt elects to use a semi-colon because he wants to show the relationship between the two independent clauses. A full point would pull the clauses a little further apart and reduce the intimacy between them.

Should you use semi-colons in your fiction?
Some authors prefer to omit semi-colons for a variety of reasons: they're deemed pretentious, confusing, interruptive or ugly. But I’m not sure we should judge them so harshly:

• They needn’t be pretentious. There’s nothing pompous about Herron and Rosenfelt’s writing. Both authors create compelling modern commercial fiction that keeps their readers on a page, and dying to turn it.
• While not all readers understand the grammatical nuances of the semi-colon, few will be stopped in their tracks if you use it well.
• Are they interruptive? Yes; if you use them too frequently; and your writing lurches; like a driver who’s too heavy on the brakes; too much of anything can grate. And; yes, if; you put them; in the wrong; place. Used purposefully, however, they can affect rhythm and bring clarity to a story.
• As for ugly, well, that’s subjective. I think they’re just lovely!

Further reading and cited works

• Dead Lions, Mick Herron, John Murray, 2013
• Dialogue tags
• How to punctuate dialogue
• How to use adverbs
• How to use apostrophes
• More resources for indie authors
• New Tricks, David Rosenfelt, Grand Central, 2009
• Style sheet template
• Using commas and conjunctions

A vocative expression is one in which a person is directly referred to in dialogue. It needn’t be someone’s name; it could be a form of address that relates to their job or position, or a term of endearment, respect or disrespect. Here’s how to work with them.

Purpose of vocative expressions
Vocatives serve several purposes in fiction writing:
​
1. They help readers keep track of who’s saying what to whom. This is especially useful when a character is talking to two or more people.

2. They can enrich characters’ emotions by conveying a deeper sense of urgency, frustration, surprise or patience.

3. Readers can learn quickly about how characters relate to each other. Does one rank higher or defer to the other? Perhaps they’re friends, lovers, or loathe each other.

Overuse that distracts
Overusing people’s names and titles can be grating. Vocatives aren’t the only way of signalling who’s being talked to – you could use action beats (See: What are action beats and how can you use them in fiction writing?). And if there are only two people in a scene it will be unnecessary to continually use direct forms of address.

Think about the natural speech you hear in your everyday life. Most of the time, people don’t use vocative expressions excessively. Follow their lead in your novel.

Compare the following examples:

The original version is much cleaner. The vocative in the first line helps to convey Vivian’s sarcasm. After that, Chandler lets us do the work and the conversation sounds natural.
​
How to punctuate vocatives
Commas are required for clarity.

• If the vocative expression comes at the beginning of the sentence, place a comma after it.
• If the vocative expression comes at the end of the sentence, place a comma before it.
• If the vocative expression interrupts a sentence, place a comma before and after it.
• A vocative at the beginning of a sentence can also stand alone, in which case it will be followed by a full stop (period) or exclamation mark.

Punctuating vocative expressions incorrectly can lead to ambiguity. Compare the following examples of dialogue. Notice how the missing comma changes the meaning from expressions of address to instructions to carry out acts of violence.

Lower-case or upper-case initials?
Should you use lower-case or upper-case initials when addressing a person in written dialogue? It depends.

People’s names
Names are proper nouns and therefore always take initial capital letters in the vocative case.

Terms of respect, endearment and abuse
Vocative terms of respect and endearment take lower case when used generally. Examples include: madam, sir, m’lady, miss, milord, mister; buddy, sweetie, darling, love, dear; and dopehead, fuckwit and plenty more I’d love to write here but won’t!

When terms of respect are used in conjunction with names, they become proper nouns and take upper case. Endearments and insults usually remain in lower case because they’re used adjectivally.

Titles of rank and nobility
Titles of rank and nobility take initial capitals when used vocatively. Examples include: Your Majesty, Commander, Constable, Agent, Lord, and Detective Inspector.

Compare these with narrative text and dialogue that include indirect address forms. If the relational titles are used as names (proper nouns), we retain upper case. If we’re using common nouns with determiners (a modifying word that references a noun such as ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘each’, ‘her’ and ‘my’) we use lower case.

Titles indicating a relationship
When used as a form of direct address, relational titles take upper case. Examples include: Mother, Uncle, Dad, Auntie, Grandma and Papa.

Again, compare these with narrative text and dialogue that include indirect address forms. If the relational titles are used as names (proper nouns), we retain upper case. If we’re using common nouns with determiners, we use lower case.

Summing up
Use vocatives as follows:

• to convey who’s being spoken to
• to enrich mood and emotion
• to indicate what the mood or relationship is between the speakers

Use appropriate punctuation to set off forms of address in order to avoid ambiguity. And be judicious – overuse will distract and irritate readers.

And, thank you, dear reader, for getting to the end of this article! (See what I did there?)

Cited sources

• 29 Seconds. T.M. Logan. Zaffre Publishing, 2018
• Dune. Frank Herbert. New English Library, 1984
• Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë. Scholastic, 2014. Kindle edition
• Maddon’s Rock. Hammond Innes. Fontana Books, 1947
• The Big Sleep. Raymond Chandler. Penguin, 1948
• The Hard Way. Lee Child. Bantam Books, 2006
• The Inspector and Mrs Jeffries. Emily Brightwell. C&R Crime, 2013
• The Punishment She Deserves. Elizabeth George. Hodder, 2019. Kindle edition 

Action beats are short descriptions that come before, between or just after dialogue. Here’s how to use them in your fiction writing.

What do action beats do?
Action beats enrich characters’ voices by telling us about their emotions, their movements and their intentions while they’re speaking. They can even tell us who’s speaking and whether their speech is reliable or not. And they can ensure that readers don’t become bored.

In that sense, we can think of them as alternative narrative ‘voices’ that enrich our perceptions of, or engagement with, the characters.

1. The voice breaker
Long chunks of dialogue can be off-putting. Action beats can act as rhythm moderators that break up the speech and its tagging.

​2. The emotional voice
Action beats can be mood indicators. In real life, we express what we’re feeling or sensing – for example, sadness, pain and frustration – with our bodies as much as our voices. Emotions manifest physically.
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In fiction, complementary action beats can enrich the reader’s understanding of character emotions but without clumsy dialogue tags or adverbial modifiers that distract from the dialogue.

​Here are some examples:

3. The physical voice
​Perhaps you’ve heard of the term ‘talking heads syndrome’. When there’s a lot of dialogue, the reader can end up dislocated from the environment, as if the characters are speaking in a vacuum or floating in white space.

In ‘The Dreaded “Talking Heads Syndrome”’, writer James Boyle discusses an example from a writer in his critique group:

‘... [they] wrote a scene for a mystery story in which a detective is arguing with her boss. Though somewhat trite, the dialogue was realistic and believable, but there was virtually no description of their surroundings, no description of how the characters react to their environment.’
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Action beats ground the dialogue by quickly giving it physicality – a geographical region, a room, a time of day, the weather conditions, even a body. They keep the reader grounded in the scene, which helps retain immersion.

​Here are a few more examples:

4. The alternative voice
What a character says via dialogue and what they mean or think might be very different. Action beats can act as an alternative voice that indicates reticence or unreliability. They say what the character can’t or won’t.

​The examples below show you how it works:

5. The voice indicator
Action beats and dialogue run on from each other because they’re connected. That means we can use beats instead of tags; they tell the reader who’s speaking.

Once more, I've given you some examples below:

How to lay out action beats and dialogue
Because action beats relate to dialogue, we run them on rather than creating a paragraph return.

Here’s an example from Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (p.125):

How to punctuate and format actions beats
Before the dialogue
The action beat ends with a full point. An opening speech mark follows. The first word of the dialogue takes a capital letter.

• He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

Note that I’ve styled this with single quotation marks, but doubles might be your preference, especially if you’re writing in US English.

After the dialogue
The dialogue finishes with a full point followed by a closing speech mark. The first word of the action beat takes a capital letter.

• ‘This is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain.

Again, I’ve used single quotation marks, but doubles are fine too. It’s a style choice.

Within the dialogue
You have several choices about how to handle this depending on where the beat goes and what punctuation style you choose.

Example 1: Mid-sentence
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue mid-sentence, which lends emphasis to the word ‘This’.

If you’re writing in British English style, you might prefer spaced en dashes and single quotation marks. This is how it looks:

• ‘This’ – he jabbed at the chintz curtain – ‘is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

If you’re writing in US English style, you might go with closed-up em dashes and double quotation marks. This is how it looks:

• “This”—he jabbed at the chintz curtain—“is the problem. My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.”

Notice the lack of initial capital letters and the omission of commas in both examples.

Example 2: Between complete sentences
In this case, the beat interrupts the dialogue between sentences. This is how it works:

• ‘This is the problem.’ He jabbed at the chintz curtain. ‘My gran thought this was modern. That was in 1978.’

Notice that because the sentences in the dialogue are complete, we punctuate and capitalize according to the Before the dialogue and After the dialogue examples above.
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Overuse, repetition and cliché
As is always the case with good writing, devices such as action beats, free indirect speech, dialogue tags, and anaphora work best when the reader can’t identify a writing pattern. Instead, mix things up so that your reader doesn’t guess which literary tool’s coming.

Pay attention to whether you repeat particular action beats, particularly clichéd ones. If your characters often purse their lips, furrow their brows, rake their hands through their hair, spit on the ground, or roll their eyes while they’re speaking, it’s time to think of alternative ways to express despair, disgruntlement or annoyance.

Summing up
Use action beats to enrich the emotionality of your characters’ speech and add interest to your writing. Think about how they can anchor the dialogue in a physical space, and whether they’ll provide an alternative to a speech tag so we know who’s saying what. However, watch out for oft-repeated phrases that turn beats from pop to pattern.

​Cited sources

• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah. Harper, 2017
• Don't Let Go by Harlan Coben. Arrow, 2018
• Sleeping in the Ground by Peter Robinson. Hodder & Stoughton, 2018
• The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty. Serpent's Tail, 2012
• The Dreaded 'Talking Heads Syndrome', James Boyle, 2014

Apostrophes confound some authors. Not knowing how to use them doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer, but getting them wrong can distract a reader and alter the meaning of what you want to say. This guide shows you how to get it right.

What does an apostrophe look like?
The apostrophe is the same mark as a closing single quotation mark: ’ (unicode 2019).

This is worth remembering when you use them in your fiction to indicate the omission of letters at the beginning of a word. More on that further down.

What do apostrophes do?
Apostrophes have two main jobs:

1. To indicate possession
2. To indicate omission

And sometimes a third (though this is rarer and only applies to some expressions):

3. To indicate a plural

​1. Indicating possession
The English language doesn’t have one set of rules that apply universally. However, when it comes to possessive apostrophes, the following will usually apply:

Add an apostrophe after the thing that is doing the possessing.
​

• If there is one thing – one noun – an s follows the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural noun is formed by adding an s (e.g. 1 horse; 2 horses), no s is required after the apostrophe.
• If there’s more than one noun, and the plural is formed irregularly (e.g. 1 child; 2 children), an s follows the apostrophe.

Possessive apostrophes and names
Names can be tricky. The most common problem I see is authors struggling to place the apostrophe correctly when family names are being used in the possessive case, even more so when the name ends with an s.
​
Here are some examples of standard usage to show you how it’s done:

Note that in the Melanie Fields singular-possession example, there are two options. Both are correct but some readers will find the second more difficult to pronounce because there are three s's a row.

Hart’s Rules (4.2.1 Possession) has this advice: 'An apostrophe and s are generally used with personal names ending in an s, x, or z sound […] but an apostrophe alone may be used in cases where an additional s would cause difficulty in pronunciation, typically after longer names that are not accented on the last or penultimate syllable.’

If you're unsure whether to apply the final s in a case like this, use common sense. Read it aloud to see if you can wrap your tongue around it, and decide whether the meaning is clear. Then choose the version that works best and go for consistency across your file. Pedantry shouldn't trump prescriptivism in effective writing.

2. Indicating omission
Indicating omission when one word is created from two
In fiction, we often use contracted forms of two words to create a more natural rhythm in the prose, particularly in dialogue. The apostrophes indicate that letters (and spaces) have been removed.
​
Common examples include:

Indicating omission at the beginning, middle and end of single words
We can use an apostrophe to indicate that a letter is missing at the end of a word (dancing – dancin’), the middle of a word (cannot – can’t) and the beginning of a word (horrible – ’orrible).

Start-of-word letter omissions are commonly used in fiction writing to indicate informal speech or a speaker’s accent.

Make sure you use the correct mark. Microsoft Word automatically inserts an opening single quotation mark (‘) when you type it at the beginning of a word because it assumes you’re using it as a speech indicator.

Apostrophes are ALWAYS the closing single quotation mark (’) so do double check if you’re indicating omission at the start of a word.

Indicating omission in numbers and dates
Plural numbers don’t usually require an apostrophe because there’s no ambiguity. In fiction writing, it’s common to spell out numbers for one hundred and below, but even when numerals are used, no apostrophe is needed for plurals.

Omission-indicating apostrophes at the beginning of dates are acceptable according to some style manuals. In the example below, the 1970s is abbreviated. It’s conventional in UK writing to follow the NHR example below.
​
In fiction, however, you can avoid the issue by spelling out the dates. This is universally acceptable, and my preference when writing and editing fiction.

3. Indicating a plural with an apostrophe
When indicating the plural of lower-case letters – for example, if you want to refer to two instances of the letter a – it’s essential to use an apostrophe because the addition of only an s will lead to confusion.
​
In the non-standard examples below, you can see how the plurals (in bold) form complete words, resulting in ambiguity.

For that reason, it’s considered standard to use an apostrophe (see The Chicago Manual of Style Online 7.15 and New Hart’s Rules 4.2.2).

When indicating the plural of upper-case letters, the apostrophe would be considered non-standard because there’s no ambiguity.

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes and possessive pronouns
Possessive pronouns are the bane of the apostrophe novice’s writing life, especially its!

The following possessive pronouns NEVER need an apostrophe: hers, theirs, yours and its.

• it’s = the contracted form of it is (or it has)
• its = the possessive pronoun

​If you’re unsure whether to insert an apostrophe in its, say it out loud as it is. If it makes sense, you need an apostrophe; if it doesn’t, you don’t!

Avoiding erroneous apostrophes in plural forms
The apostrophe novice can fall into the trap of creating plural forms of nouns by adding an apostrophe before the final s.

Summary
I hope you’ve found this overview useful. It isn’t exhaustive – there are entire books about apostrophes. Fucking Apostrophes is one of my favourites.

However, when it comes to fiction writing, it’s unlikely that you’ll need to worry about more than the basics covered here.

If you’re stuck on where to stick your apostrophe, feel free to ask me for guidance in the comments.

Further reading

• Fucking Apostrophes (Simon Griffin, Icon Books, 2016)
• How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article and free booklet)
• Punctuating dialogue in fiction (video series on my YouTube channel)
• New Hart’s Rules (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

Dialogue tags – or speech tags – are what writers use to indicate which character is speaking. Their function is, for the most part, mechanical. This article is about how to use them effectively.

A dialogue tag can come before, between or after direct speech:
​

• Dave said, ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That,’ said Dave, ‘is the last thing I expected you to say.’
• ‘That’s the last thing I expected you to say,’ Dave said.​

​​
Placed in between direct speech, tags can moderate the pace by forcing the reader to pause, and improve the rhythm by breaking up longer chunks.

Rather than give you a bunch of zombie rules that you’ll want to break about two seconds after you’ve read them, here are three guidelines to bear in mind when thinking about which tags to use, which to avoid, and when you might omit them altogether:
​

1. A good tag doesn’t trump the dialogue.
2. A good tag doesn’t repeat what the dialogue’s already told the reader.
3. A good tag doesn’t impair how natural the speech sounds.

Why said often works best, and when it’s not enough
The speech tag said  ‘is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible,’ say Mittelmark and Newman in How Not to Write a Novel (p. 132).

I agree, and I recommend you embrace it! If someone’s told you to avoid repeating said, head for your bookshelf and take a peek inside some of your favourite novels for reassurance.

If you deliberately try to avoid said, you run the risk that your writing will reflect that intention. If your reader is focusing on your avoidance, their focus is not where it should be – on your story.

Still, there will be times when you’ll want a tag that tells your reader about, say, the sound quality, the mood of the speech, or the tone of voice. Speech tags aren’t the only way to do this – for example, you could use action beats before the dialogue, or adverbial phrases after your tags – but few readers will complain if you use the likes of whispered, yelled, shouted, muttered or whined. Hissed is one that I rather like, though some writers and editors are less keen.

Even though said 's invisibility makes it harder to overuse, avoid the temptation to place it after every expression. Here’s an example of how it looks when it's been overworked (see, too, the final section in this article, ‘Omitting dialogue tags’):

Showy speech tags and underdeveloped dialogue
Showy tags can overwhelm dialogue. Since you’ve written your dialogue for a reason, that’s where the reader’s attention should be. When the tag is more visible than the speech, it’s a red flag that the dialogue, not the tag, needs enriching:

​Instead, we might amend the dialogue so that it conveys the preaching tone, and leaves the tag (said) with the mechanical function of indicating who’s speaking:

Showy speech tags and double-telling
Some speech tags are just repetitions of what the reader already knows – they double-tell. Asked and replied are two common examples, though these are used so often that they don’t fall into the showy category. For that reason, I don’t think you need to go out of your way to avoid these, though do take care not to overuse them.

Showier examples – such as opined, commanded, threatened – become redundant if you’ve got the dialogue right:

In the first three examples, it’s clear from the dialogue that an opinion, a command and a threat have been given. The speech tags repeat what we already know; we should consider whether said is a less invasive alternative.

In the fourth example, amazing and the exclamation mark (!) tell us that the speaker exclaimed, so again the showy tag is redundant.

It’s a question of style, of course. I’m not giving you rules but suggesting ways of thinking about the function of your tagging so that you keep your reader immersed in the spaces of your choosing.
​
Non-speech-based dialogue tags and the reality flop
Even if you decide you do want a more extravagant tag than said, take care when using verbs that are not related to the mechanics of speaking.

Examples include: smiled, gesticulated, ejaculated, thrusted, fawned, scowled, winced, smirked, sneered, pouted, frowned, indicated and laughed.

The physicality of these verbs will jar your reader and they immediately introduce an element of inauthenticity into the prose. They’re great words for describing what other parts of a person’s body can do, but are unsuitable for use as dialogue tags:

Try one of the following instead:

Alternatives to showy speech tags – more on action beats
Rich action beats can complement or even replace speech tags, and are useful if you want to keep your dialogue lean and are tempted to use a showy speech tag. Keep them on the same line as the speaker they’re related to.

Action beats let you set the scene so that the reader can fill in the gaps with their imagination while a character is speaking.

Here’s an example of dialogue with a showy speech tag – moaned:

In the alternative below, the reader can discern the moaning manner in which the speech is delivered because James’s discomfort is shown in the action beat preceding it:

Notice how the action beat is punctuated. There’s a full stop (period) after winced.

Neither of these examples is wrong or right. You might decide that you prefer one over the other. Rather, I’m showing you alternatives so that you can make informed decisions about how to make your writing engaging.

Using proper nouns in dialogue tags
If your fiction is gender binary (and it might well not be) and the genders are known to the reader, you needn’t repeat the speaker’s name every time they appear in a dialogue tag. You can use third-person singular pronouns: he and she. Clarity is everything here.
​
Notice how Alexander McCall Smith uses nouns and pronouns in his dialogue tags, and peppers the text with action beats so that the reader knows who’s speaking (The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 125):

​Omitting dialogue tags
If you’re confident your reader can keep track of who’s saying what in a conversation, you can omit dialogue tags altogether. Once more, it’s not about rules but about sense and clarity.

This will work best if there are no more than two characters in the conversation, and even then, most writers don’t extend the omission for more than a few back-and-forths before they introduce a reminder tag or an action beat.

Here’s an example from Peter Robinson’s DCI Banks novel Sleeping in the Ground (pp. 273–4). There are two characters in this scene: Banks and Linda. Robinson omits most of the dialogue tags in this conversation because it’s clear who’s speaking, but he keeps us on track with an action beat and a tag halfway through:

Summing up
When it comes to dialogue, remember the function of the tag: to indicate which character is speaking.

​Says Beth Hill, ‘These tags are background, part of the mechanics of story; they meet their purpose but don’t stand out. They let the dialogue take the spotlight’ (The Magic of Fiction, p. 166).

So, during the self-editing process:

• Check your tags to ensure they’re performing their indicative function rather than taking the spotlight.
• Position them to moderate pace and improve rhythm.
• Take care with non-speech-related tags.
  
• And support your dialogue with action beats so that said can take invisible pride of place.

Cited sources and further reading

• Alexander McCall Smith: The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Abacus, 2003
• Beth Hill: The Magic of Fiction. Title Page Books, 2016
• Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman: How Not to Write a Novel. Penguin, 2009
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (article)
• Louise Harnby: How to punctuate dialogue in a novel (videos)
• Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground. Hodder & Stoughton, 2017

​

This post shows you how you can use commas and conjunctions to alter the rhythm of a sentence. Changing the rhythm can help your readers immerse themselves deeper in the mood of your narrative and the emotions of your characters.

Standard grammar advice – the stuff we learned when we were kids – calls for lists with three or more items (or phrases or clauses) in a sentence to be separated by a comma, and for a conjunction to be inserted before the final item:

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols and machetes.

Or, if your preference is to use the serial (or Oxford comma):

Her arsenal of weapons included rifles, pistols, and machetes.

The use of this one conjunction is called syndeton, and it moderates the pace.

When it comes to fiction, standard grammar works very well for the most part. However, there are other accepted literary devices you can use to help your readers feel the scene you’ve written in a different way: asyndeton and polysyndeton.

I’ve used examples from crime fiction in this article but the principles apply across genres.
​
More on syndetic constructions
Syndeton is everywhere. It’s the most oft-used way of constructing a sentence with multiple clauses, and it works well because it aids clarity: this thing, that thing and that other thing.
​
Here’s an excerpt from At Risk by Stella Rimington (p. 369):

And here’s an example from Jo Nesbo’s first Harry Hole thriller, The Bat (p. 250):

This second excerpt is taken from a chapter in which the head of the crime squad, Neil McCormack, delivers a long speech to the protagonist, Harry Hole. Harry has just spent nearly an hour delivering his own monologue, updating McCormack on everything that’s happened so far.

The mood of the entire scene is one of contemplation and resignation. The characters give each other the space to talk without rushing. Their behaviour feels controlled, and the way they talk is measured.

The grammatical structure of the sentence (syndetic) is a good choice because it moderates the speed at which we read, and reflects the mood.

Omitting conjunctions – asyndeton
Authors might choose on occasion to change the mood of a sentence by deliberately removing the conjunction. Separating all the items with only commas accelerates the rhythm.

That speeding-up can have a variety of effects:

• Imparting emotions – for example, frustration, futility, despair, desperation, determination, fear, hysteria or urgency.
• Indicating that a person is speaking rapidly.
• Evoking a sense of dislocation by bringing clinical precision to the narrative.
• Adding weight to each clause, thereby increasing drama.

Let’s go back to the Nesbo example and see what happens when we change it:

‘They helped the Allies against the Germans and the Italians, the South Koreans against the North Koreans, the Americans against the Japanese and the North Vietnamese.’

By omitting the conjunction and inserting a comma, a sense of frustration and urgency is introduced. It’s subtle, certainly, but that’s the beauty of it.

If Nesbo had wanted to convey more immediacy, he could have elected to make these small changes. They would have altered the rhythm and showed (without spelling it out) that McCormack’s tone had changed or the pace of his speech had increased.

Here are two examples from Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (p. 274 and p. 355):

In the example above, Ludlum could have introduced ‘and’ after/instead of the final comma of the first sentence with no detrimental effects, but I think its omission brings a sense of urgency and determination to the writing that reflects the tension of the scene.

In the excerpt below, he uses asyndeton to evoke a sense of futility, frustration and anger. The reader is forced to become bogged down in the senseless loss of life from a bullet to the head:

Asyndetic constructions can be particularly effective in noir and hardboiled crime fiction. These genres don’t shy away from the dark underbelly of their settings. The characters are often as damaged as the gritty environments they work within, and a sense of hollowness and futility underpins the novels.

Here’s an excerpt from The Little Sister (p. 177) by the king of hardboiled, Raymond Chandler: