Editing our Personal Narrative stories for punctuation and problems with dialogue

How to edit your dialogue

The rules for creating grammatically correct dialogue can seem overwhelming, but I'm going to break them down for you in chunks.  Let me know if you have questions or run into problems.

1) You need to separate dialogue from the rest of the sentence with commas.
     "I'm so proud of this," I yelped.
     I yelped, "I'm so proud of this."

2) The comma goes inside of the quotation marks.
     "And the winner is Keith," said Mr. Sherman.

3) Question marks and exclamation points take the place of commas inside of quotes.
     "Can we go to the store?" I begged my mom.
     "Get over here!" shouted Mr. Blorgabits.

4) Split or interrupted quotes need two commas.
     "And the winner is," shouted Mr. Sherman, "Keith!" 

5) Capitalize the start of quotes.
     I asked John, "Hey, can I come over?"

6) Continuations of quotes that have been split or interrupted are not capitalized.
     "Hey," I asked, "can I come over?"

7) Start a new paragraph and indent each time a new speaker talks in your story.
     "Hey," I asked, "can I come over?"
     "Sure, that'd be awesome.  I need help capturing the last ten Pokemon," John replied.
     "Awesome!  I can't wait.  Thanks."