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Are you confused about when to add commas before coordinating conjunctions linking independent clauses? This post offers guidance and a few examples to show you the way.
Rules, convention and meaning
Some writers and editors love a rule. I’m not so keen on the language of ‘rules’ because it sets up a binary mindset that’s focused on ‘wrong’ versus ‘right’ rather than clarity of meaning. Instead, I prefer to think in terms of convention. Grammatical conventions are useful and purposeful. They provide us with a common frame of reference that helps us communicate clearly through the written word. We can start by at least acknowledging the following:
Balancing convention and meaning Writing and editing fiction requires deciding when to break with convention. But how do we work out what works and what doesn’t? Here’s how I frame the balancing act:
So how does that apply to commas, coordinating conjunctions and independent clauses? What are coordinating conjunctions? Coordinating conjunctions are words that join other words or groups of words of equal weight. You might see them referred to in short as FANBOYS:
What are independent clauses?
Independent clauses are groups of words that can stand as a sentence on their own and still make sense. They include a subject and a predicate. Subjects are people/things that are doing something or being something – the noun (the thing) and the adjectival information describing that noun. The four examples given below are all subjects.
Predicates are what they’re doing – the verb (the doing word) and the thing the verb’s acting on. The four examples below are all predicates.
Joining subjects and predicates gives us independent clauses. Here are two simple examples (subject in bold; predicate underlined).
The comma convention
If two or more independent clauses in a sentence are joined by a coordinating conjunction, it’s conventional to place a comma before that conjunction. EXAMPLE AND EVALUATION #1 In the following example, the independent clauses are in bold.
The dog is pale yellow, and it's licking its paws.
The independent clauses could stand on their own as complete sentences and be understood perfectly well. Let’s revisit our balancing act and assess the impact of the comma. The degree to which the comma serves meaning here is, I think, debatable. This is what it looks like without the comma:
The dog is pale yellow and it's licking its paws.
There’s no ambiguity there, and so one could argue that insisting on a comma would be grammatical pedantry. An editor would struggle to justify adding a comma for any other reason than ‘that’s the rule’ or 'I think it looks better' because the meaning is perfectly clear. Could someone argue that the comma enforces the equal weighting of the independent clauses lying either side of the coordinating conjunction? Yes in that it acts as a separator of two ideas: the dog’s colour and what it’s doing to its paws; the one isn't related to the other. And so I certainly wouldn’t remove it if it were already in place; there’s no justification for such an action. MORE COMPLEX CONSTRUCTIONS Many sentences in fiction are more complex. If our example looked like this, we might have a sounder justification for adding the comma:
She stops in the doorway and holds her breath. She’s found it. The dog is pale yellow and it's licking its paws and nipping at the bloodied fur around the wound.
In the revised example below, I think applying the conventional punctuation helps. The rhythm is moderated – we take a little breath when we reach the comma – and experience (through our viewpoint character’s eyes) first the colour of the dog and then what it’s doing and why. The two ideas have a starker separation, and the punctuation convention supports that meaning.
She stops in the doorway and holds her breath. She’s found it. The dog is pale yellow, and it's licking its paws and nipping at the bloodied fur around the wound.
EXAMPLE AND EVALUATION #2 Here’s an excerpt from Robert Ludlum’s The Janson Directive (Orion, 2003, p. 355). Once more, both independent clauses are in bold.
Another dumb, inanimate slug would shatter another skull, and another life would be stricken, erased, turned into the putrid animal matter from which it had been constituted.
The independent clauses could stand on their own as complete sentences and be understood perfectly well. Again, let’s revisit our balancing act and assess the impact of the comma. I think the comma serves meaning and is necessary. Without it, we might start to read the sentence as if the slug would shatter not just a skull but another life too. That’s not what Ludlum is saying. Instead, we’re alerted that another idea is coming into play. A trip-up here means the reader would have to fix the grammar in their head and reread the sentence to make sense of it. That’s a momentary distraction no writer wants. 
Breaking with convention in fiction
Let’s have a look at when we might ignore grammatical convention. Below is a short scene I’ve made up. Our protagonist is a forty-year-old woman having a nightmare about a past event.
There’s a huge yellow dog snarling in the doorway, blocking the way out. Its hackles are raised and it’s grinding its teeth and it’s foaming at the mouth and it’s—
I wake, slick with sweat, the six-year-old me hovering spectre-like in my mind’s eye. It’s the third time I’ve had that dream in the past week. There are three independent clauses (and the start of a fourth) linked by a coordinating conjunction. The ‘rule’ says there should be a comma before all those ‘and’s. EVALUATION A pro fiction editor would want to think twice before they start adding in commas because of some rule or other.
Using anaphora doesn’t mean we have to ignore commas, far from it. But what would introducing them do to rhythm and mood? I think the lack of commas helps us to feel our way under the skin of that dream-child because young children in a panic don’t introduce pauses or moderate their speech according to a style manual or a grammar guide. Instead, words fly from their mouths like tiny storms. What we have instead is the sense of terrified disorientation being experienced by the dreamer, one that’s shown rather than told. Commas would moderate the pace and separate the ideas contained in each independent clause; omitting them means we’re offered a stream of terrified consciousness. 
More exceptions
Some grammarians do allow for an exception when the independent clauses are short and closely related. In the examples that follow, the coordinating conjunctions are underlined; notice the absence of the preceding comma. Sense isn’t marred because of the missing punctuation.
It’s an eminently sensible exception – one that allows for decluttering but also avoids a separation of ideas that isn’t appropriate.
Summing up The grammatical convention of placing a comma before a coordinating conjunction linking independent clauses is helpful and useful. However, sometimes we can omit those commas:
Style and grammar resources offer guidance, and we should use them, but only in so far as they serve the reader and the story, not because we are rule enforcers. That’s nothing more than a road to literary butchery. More resources to help you line edit with confidence
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise discuss how to use exclamation marks, and why more than one is too many.
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Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise explain what a comma splice is, why you should usually avoid it, and how it can add clarity.
Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 8
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‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. What is a comma splice? When two independent clauses – which could stand on their own as sentences and make perfect sense – are separated by a comma, the sentence is said to contain a comma splice. For example:
Those two sentence above could be separated by a semi-colon, a dash, or a full stop and no one would be breathing grammar rules down your neck: Standard punctuation
However, if you use a comma to separate them, that heavy breathing will come from some quarters: Non-standard: comma splice
Why comma splices trip up readers Some people don’t know what a comma splice is and don’t care. But plenty do, and even if they don’t know what’s it called, they trip up. For those in the know, comma spliced sentences (sometimes) scream off the page for precisely that reason. That's because when readers see a comma they're inclined to think, This is the start of a list. A standard method for showing a reader that they’re coming to the end of a list is to incorporate a coordinating conjunction such as ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘though’ and ‘or’. It acts as shorthand for One more item’s coming. Then there’ll be a full stop. And so when only two items are separated by a comma, the reader’s expecting at least one more item in that list. When that third item doesn’t appear and the sentence finishes, the reader is jolted because they've placed the emphasis in the wrong place. Try reading these examples out loud:
Your intonation likely changed as you read the words 'but I think oranges are okay' because you knew you were finishing a sentence. In the second example, you were left hanging after 'hate pears' and likely hadn't placed the stress correctly. These kinds of stumbles are a distraction that, even if only for a split second, pulls the reader out of the writing. Now they’re thinking about where they placed the emphasis, not about our fabulous learning tool, enthralling plot line or groundbreaking academic research. When comma splices can work: fiction Comma splices are probably more prevalent in published fiction, and more acceptable. Sometimes, and with good reason. The comma doesn't always trip up readers. The key is to allow splices to stand when they serve a purpose. Narrative and rhythm Take this example from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity’ and so on. This prose is an experiment in rhythm. The splices work. But something else is going on too – the anaphora. Anaphora is a literary device that uses repetition for rhythmic effect. In the Dickens example, the repetition of 'it was' pulls us along on a beautiful booky wave. Editing in semi-colons or full points would destroy the rhythm and would qualify as an example of editorial hypercorrection. For a more detailed examination of anaphora, read: What is anaphora and how can you use it in fiction writing? Dialogue and mood While a comma splice will stick out like a sore thumb in a piece of academic research or an education textbook, that’s not always the case in dialogue. If the speech is truncated, or there's anaphora in play, a comma might well work. Imagine this scenario in a novel: two characters are having an argument. One says, ‘It’s not me, it’s you’. Strictly speaking, that's a comma splice. There are two independent clauses with a comma. Would it bother you? Probably not. The speech looks and sounds natural to the mind's ear. Changing the comma to a full stop would slow down the rhythm of the character’s speech and affect the emotionality in the dialogue. But most important, readers won't trip up; they'll place the emphasis correctly. And so while emotion and mood have been respected, this hasn't been at the expense of clarity. Summing up
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
Denise and Louise talk about how to use question marks in fiction and non-fiction according to convention.
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Music credit ‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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 Quote marks are used in 3 ways in fiction:
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.
'What about your friends? Didn't they help?' Molly said.
Peter almost laughed. The last time his 'friends' had phoned or visited had been over six months ago. Two had wanted money, Another needed business advice. A fourth had spent the evening flirting with his now ex-wife. 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.
NON-STANDARD (USING DOUBLES AS BASE STYLE)
"What about your friends? Didn't they help?" Molly said. Peter almost laughed. The last time his 'friends' had phoned or visited had been over six months ago. Two had wanted money, Another needed business advice. A fourth had spent the evening flirting with his now ex-wife. STANDARD (USING DOUBLES AS BASE STYLE) "What about your friends? Didn't they help?" Molly said. Peter almost laughed. The last time his "friends" had phoned or visited had been over six months ago. Two had wanted money, Another needed business advice. A fourth had spent the evening flirting with his now ex-wife. 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.
Jamie pulled the vinyl from its sleeve. The White Album. His favourite. Well, 'Back in the USSR' anyway. He'd never admit it but he didn't much care for the other songs.
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.
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:
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:
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 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.
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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
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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:
Detective Harnby typed up the report and dumped it on the desk in the chief-super’s office (and what a sty that was).
Detective Harnby typed up the report and dumped it on the desk in the chief-super’s office. (And what a sty that was.)
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:
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:
A mirror reflects the Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel-of-all-work. The Heralds’ College found out a crusading ancestor for Veneering, who bore a camel on his shield (or might have done it if he had thought of it),
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:
Spaced en dash
With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal – no way was she paying room-service prices. Closed-up em dash With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal—no way was she paying room-service prices. Semicolon With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal; no way was she paying room-service prices. Full point With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal. No way was she paying room-service prices. 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.
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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:
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:
That old dog (the black one) is as sweet as they come.
That old dog, the black one, is as sweet as they come. That old dog – the black one – is as sweet as they come. That old dog—the black one—is as sweet as they come. She knew the name of that old dog – everyone did. She knew the name of that old dog—everyone did. That sweet old dog had a name – Patch. That sweet old dog had a name: Patch. 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):
The yard – every single blade of grass seeming to cast a shadow in the moonlight – was empty.
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:
The yard—every single blade of grass seeming to cast a shadow in the moonlight—was empty.
Some style guides even ask for SPACED EM DASHES, though I see this usage less frequently:
The yard — every single blade of grass seeming to cast a shadow in the moonlight — was empty.
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:
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:
Morning registration: 9.30–11.30 (full stops more often used in time styles in UK English)
Morning registration: 9:30–11:30 (colons more often used in time styles in US English) See pp. 86–95 The 1914–18 war was the war to end all wars 07/03/1967–26/06/2019 (day/month/year; standard in UK English) 03/07/1967–06/26/2019 (month/day/year; standard in 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:
Read from p. 86 to p. 95 (standard)
Read pp. 86–95 (standard) Read from p. 86–95 (non-standard) The war lasted from 1914 to 1918 (standard) The war lasted from 1914–18 (non-standard) I’ll be there between 9:30 and 11:30 (standard) I’ll be there between 9:30–11:30 (non-standard) 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.
Excerpt from the Kindle edition:
—There is no need to get angry. —I’m not angry. —If you say so. You have a problem with authority. —You don’t need a test to work that one out. 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)::
‘I got the guys at the Troc to pick it up on Clerkenwell Road. They tracked—’
‘You got the guys—’ ‘Yeah yeah. Catherine got the guys at the Troc to pick them up.’ And another from Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot (p. 380):
“Ms. Plimpton,” Duckworth said. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Detective Barry—”
“I know exactly who you are,” she said, and reached out and took his hand in hers. 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:
“We’ve talked about this monstrosity before”—he jabbed at the flock wallpaper—“and I’m telling you, it has to go.”
And if you’re following UK English convention, use SPACED EN DASHES:
‘We’ve talked about this monstrosity before’ – he jabbed at the flock wallpaper – ‘and I’m telling you, it has to go.’
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.
Hyphens (staccato):
"No. I-I-I mean, not really. It was an accident. I just s-s-saw him standing there and I flipped," Marion said. Closed-up em dash for faltering phrasing (US style): "I can't—I mean I shouldn't—well, it's difficult to know what to do." Spaced en dash for faltering phrasing (UK style): 'I can't – I mean I shouldn't – well, it's difficult to know what to do.' Ellipses for pauses (in conjunction with dashes): 'I can't – I mean I shouldn't – oh God ... you know what? It's d-d-difficult to know what to do.' "No. I ... I mean, not really. It was an accident. I just s-s-saw him standing there and I flipped," Marion said. 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:
‘No,’ Louise said. ‘That’s not how you spell it. It’s T-O-M-A-S.’
“That doesn’t make sense. The extension he gave me is 1-9-1-8. Are you sure it’s a five-digit number?” 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:
They’d nurtured that author–editor relationship for years.
“Those two have had an on–off relationship for over a decade. I wish they’d make their minds up!” ‘I’m going to get the Liverpool–Belfast ferry. There’s one at ten thirty.’ Danny would take the money and Sheryl would get her promotion. It was a win–win. I couldn’t see us winning the England–Brazil match but I put a tenner on us anyway. Just for fun. Amir was an Asian–British scholar and something of a polyglot. ‘Languages float on the wind in my grandparents’ village,’ he once told me. 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:
He buttoned up a navy-blue shirt.
but His shirt was navy blue. “That well-read woman you were talking about? She’s called Sally.” but “Sally sure is well read, no doubt about it.” 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:
Amir was an Asian–British scholar and something of a polyglot. ‘Languages float on the wind in my grandparents’ village,’ he once told me.
Amir was an Asian-British scholar and something of a polyglot. ‘Languages float on the wind in my grandparents’ village,’ he once told me. Amir was an Asian British scholar and something of a polyglot. ‘Languages float on the wind in my grandparents’ village,’ he once told me. Amir was a British Asian scholar and something of a polyglot. ‘Languages float on the wind in my grandparents’ village,’ he once told me. 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:
To indicate partial omission of a word, and the number of letters that have been omitted, choose the SPACED EN DASH (or unspaced asterisks):
‘The scandal featured a certain Mrs H – – – – –. Can you believe it?’ ‘I told you to p – – – off!’ he said, spittle flying. ‘I told you to p*** off!’ he said, spittle flying. To indicate partial omission of a word with a single mark, choose the CLOSED-UP EM DASH: ‘The scandal featured a certain Mrs H—. Can you believe it?’ ‘I told you to p— off!’ he said, spittle flying. To indicate complete omission of a word with a single mark, choose the SPACED EM DASH: ‘The scandal featured a certain Mrs —. Can you believe it?’ ‘I told you to — off!’ he said, spittle flying. CMOS recommends the following for US style:
To indicate partial omission of a word, choose a CLOSED-UP 2EM DASH:
“The scandal featured a certain Mrs H⸺. Can you believe it?” “I told you to p⸺ off!” he said, spittle flying. To indicate complete omission of a word, choose the SPACED 2EM DASH: “The scandal featured a certain Mrs ⸺. Can you believe it?” “I told you to ⸺ off!” he said, spittle flying. 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!
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.
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 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.
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).
1. Amended with en dash
He was bald, or mostly bald – a crop of white stubble gilded his ears – and gave off an air of pent-up energy, of emotions kept in check – the same sense Lamb had had watching the video of him, shot eighteen years ago, through a two-way mirror in one of Regent’s Park’s luxury suites. Joke. These were underground, and were where the Service’s more serious debriefings took place; those which it might later prove politic to deny had happened. 2. Amended with comma He was bald, or mostly bald – a crop of white stubble gilded his ears – and gave off an air of pent-up energy, of emotions kept in check, the same sense Lamb had had watching the video of him, shot eighteen years ago, through a two-way mirror in one of Regent’s Park’s luxury suites. Joke. These were underground, and were where the Service’s more serious debriefings took place; those which it might later prove politic to deny had happened. 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:
Original
He was bald, or mostly bald – a crop of white stubble gilded his ears – and gave off an air of pent-up energy, of emotions kept in check; the same sense Lamb had had watching the video of him, shot eighteen years ago, through a two-way mirror in one of Regent’s Park’s luxury suites. Joke. These were underground, and were where the Service’s more serious debriefings took place; those which it might later prove politic to deny had happened.
1. Amended with comma
He was bald, or mostly bald – a crop of white stubble gilded his ears – and gave off an air of pent-up energy, of emotions kept in check; the same sense Lamb had had watching the video of him, shot eighteen years ago, through a two-way mirror in one of Regent’s Park’s luxury suites. Joke. These were underground, and were where the Service’s more serious debriefings took place, those which it might later prove politic to deny had happened. 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:
Further reading and cited works
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. Visit her business website at Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader, say hello on Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, connect via Facebook and LinkedIn, and check out her books and courses.
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.
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.
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
Want to revisit this information quickly? Visit the Books and Videos page in my resource library to download this free booklet. 
Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.
She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), a member of ACES, a Partner Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and co-hosts The Editing Podcast. FIND OUT MORE > Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Fiction Editor & Proofreader > Connect: Twitter at @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn > Learn: Books and courses > Discover: Resources for authors and editors
If the thought of punctuating your novel’s dialogue brings you out in a sweat, let me mop your brow with these 7 tips.
In this article, we'll look at the following:
If it's more convenient, watch this complementary webinar or download a free booklet covering each of the 7 topics.
1. Indicating speech Quotation marks – or speech marks – are how authors usually indicate the spoken word. There are two choices – singles or doubles. Either are acceptable. In US fiction publishing it’s more common to use doubles; in British fiction singles dominate. That doesn’t mean you must use doubles if you’re an American author or singles if you’re a British author. It’s not about right or wrong but about style, preference and convention. Think about what your reader will expect to see and what’s standard where you live. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) recommends doubles, but acknowledges that the convention is for singles in the UK and elsewhere. The most important thing is to be consistent and never use two single quotation marks instead of a double. The following passages from published works illustrate each style:
Nested quotation marks
Sometimes you’ll need to place speech within speech (or quotes within quotes). To differentiate the speaker, use the alternate style for your internal or nested quotation marks:
Smart vs unidirectional marks
It’s conventional in mainstream publishing to use smart or curly quotation marks, not unidirectional ones. (The same applies to apostrophes, by the way.) 
Some online fonts (like the one I use for the body text on my website) don’t do a good job of differentiating smart and unidirectional quotation marks, but word-processing software like Microsoft Word does – even with sans serif fonts.
To prevent the problem occurring from the minute you begin typing:
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:
Alternative speech-indicator marks
An alternative way of displaying speech is via the em dash. This method can get messy if you have more than two speakers in a conversation, so use it with care. The em is the longest in the dash suite. In the image below (1) is a hyphen, (2) is an en dash and (3) is the em dash. 
Sylvain Neuvel uses this technique in Sleeping Giants, the first book in the hugely enjoyable Themis Files series.
While some chapters in the novel use standard quotation marks, most are case-file chapters that are entirely composed of dialogue between a known character and an agent who plays a key part in the story but remains anonymous and elusive to us throughout. Each speaker’s turn is indicated with an em dash. The agent’s speech is rendered in bold. If Neuvel had chosen the standard route, he’d have been forced to use clunky speech tags such as ‘the agent said’, and even reveal the agent’s gender to mix things up a little. Instead, the chapters are compelling, mysterious, but cleanly and tightly delivered. Here’s an excerpt from p. 104:
Same speaker; new paragraph One final word on quotation marks. 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. This example from Jo Nesbo’s The Bat (p. 251) illustrates the convention:
2. Trailing-off and pauses in speech The ellipsis is used to indicate a pause or speech trailing-off at the end of a sentence. Here’s an excerpt from At Risk (p. 434) by Stella Rimington:
Notice how Rimington doesn’t also tell us that the character’s voice has trailed off, which would be unnecessary clutter. Here’s how it might have gone if she hadn’t trusted the ellipsis to do its job and her readers to understand that: She shook her head, her eyes unfocused. Then, draining her pint glass, she nudged it towards him. ‘Could you …?’ Jean said, her voice trailing off. ‘Yeah, sure.’ Here are examples from Sleeping Giants (p. 204) and At Risk (p. 434) where an ellipsis is used to indicate a mid-sentence pause:
SLEEPING GIANTS
‘We discovered it can also be used as a weapon. It took another hole – in the wall, this time – to figure that one out, but the edge of the shield is very sharp … if you can say that about light.’ AT RISK ‘Well … He walked out on us years ago, when I was a boy, so he can’t ever have really cared for us.’ The spacing of ellipses CMOS asks for three full stops (or periods) separated by non-breaking spaces (1). Non-breaking spaces stop the elements they’re positioned between from becoming separated because of a line break. You can create one using your keyboard with the keys CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE. However, once again that’s a style choice. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the tighter single ellipsis character in Word (2). 
The Unicode character for the ellipsis is 2026. To access it, go to the INSERT tab in Word’s ribbon, select SYMBOL, then MORE SYMBOLS.
Make sure the font is set to normal text (3) before you type the code into the character-code box (4).
From here on in, when you click on SYMBOL the ellipsis will show up in the list of recently used symbols. If you’re using a professional editor, you can ask them to ensure that your ellipses are rendered correctly, though it’s something most pros would check as a matter of course.
CMOS also recommends the following:
Professional publishers use this style, and I recommend that self-publishers follow suit. 3. End-of-line interruptions in speech To indicate that a speaking character has been interrupted, use an em dash. No matter whether you’re publishing in US or UK style, this is the tool of choice. It’s a harder piece of punctuation and does a superb job of indicating emotions like impatience, curtness, disbelief, rudeness, frustration and anger on the part of the interrupting speaker. Here’s a fast-paced conversation between Louisa and Min in Mick Herron’s Dead Lions (p. 115):
This use of the em dash keeps the dialogue moving at a fast pace. Like Rimington, Herron doesn’t tell it twice. There are no cluttering speech tags or repetitive explanations that tell us how each speaker interrupted the other. The pace cracks like a whip and we’re offered an authentic back-and-forth. Here’s one more example from Linwood Barclay’s Parting Shot (p. 380). It shows how the em dash evokes a sense of impatience from the speaker who cuts in:
4. Punctuating tagged speech Your character’s just spoken a complete sentence, and you want to follow through with a tag that tells the reader who said what (e.g. he said, she said). How does the punctuation work before the closing quotation mark at the end of the sentence? The comma does the job, even when the sentence is complete, unless you’re finishing with an exclamation mark or a question mark. If there’s no tag following the dialogue, you can use a full stop. Here are some examples from Parting Shot (p. 80) to show you how it works:
Note that when you follow up with second- or third-person speech tags (you said/he said/she said/they said) they always take lower case, whether the punctuation before the closing quotation mark is a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation mark.
5. Punctuating broken-up dialogue If you want to break up your dialogue with speech tags or other stage direction, but your character hasn’t finished speaking, commas or dashes will help you keep your dialogue in order. The key is to get the punctuation right in the text between the dialogue too. Let’s look at two more examples, both from The Chosen Ones by Howard Linskey (pp. 295, 306):
The unbroken speech would appear as ‘I assume that this is not the place.’ and ‘Then he gets nothing and he won’t be able to use it, will he?’ Nevertheless, it is conventional within most mainstream publishing companies to add a comma before the first closing quotation mark and after the speech tag. These commas act as parentheses. If your dialogue is broken with description rather than speech tags, dashes can offer more clarity than commas. If you’re sticking to CMOS style, closed-up em dashes will be your choice. If you prefer the shorter en dash, place spaces around either side of it. Here’s an example from CMOS (6.87) using closed-up em dashes:
“Someday he’s going to hit one of those long shots, and”—his voice turned huffy—“I won’t be there to see it."
And here’s how it would look using spaced en dashes and single quotation marks if you were following UK publishing convention:
‘Someday he’s going to hit one of those long shots, and’ – his voice turned huffy – ‘I won’t be there to see it.’
6. Punctuating vocative expressions in dialogue A vocative expression is one where the person being addressed is directly referred to in a sentence. It needn’t be someone’s name; it could be a form of address that relates to their job or position, one that’s a term of respect (or disrespect). Commas are required for clarity.
Here are some examples:
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!
7. Indicating 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 because it depends on the effect you want to achieve.
Here’s how Sophie Hannah does it in one of her Hercule Poirot continuation novels, Closed Casket (p. 165):
And here’s a made-up example showing a more staccato faltering:
‘No. I-I-I mean not really. It was an accident. I just s-s-saw him standing there and I kinda flipped,’ Jack said.
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