How to punctuate and format dialogue in your novel

New writers often struggle with how to punctuate and format the dialogue in their novel. Even the more experienced among us can hit up against something confusing that we don’t know how to deal with – like what to do if the same character is speaking across multiple paragraphs, or if an action is interrupting the speech. Mistakes with punctuating or formatting dialogue can make things confusing and hard to follow. This can have a knock-on effect on how well your work is received on submission to literary agents, or by readers.

Let’s go over everything you need to know – from the basics to the trickier parts of punctuating and formatting dialogue!

A note before we begin…

I have to add a disclaimer here. Some things will largely depend on whether you’re writing in UK or US English. For example, it’s more common in the UK to use single quotation marks for speech ‘Like this!’ Whereas in the US, you will usually see doubles: “Like this!”

For some things (like dialogue that is being interrupted by an action), there is more than one way of punctuating it. This will largely depend on the style manual your publisher or editor is using (which is basically a big guide on all things punctuation and formatting). This isn’t something you as an author need to worry about too much, because that will be handled by your editor. They’ll be responsible for making things consistent and in line with the type of English you’re using, or the publisher’s preferred style.

But as an author, you’ll still want to learn one way to punctuate and format your dialogue, even if your publisher ends up preferring something different. Why? Because it’ll ensure your book is free of errors, and looks clean and presentable. This can benefit you on submission because a literary agent might quickly reject an author who doesn’t know how to lay out or construct dialogue. And it can benefit you when self-publishing because a cleaner manuscript can help you reduce editing costs.

Formatting dialogue in your novel

First, let’s learn how to format dialogue. Formatting dialogue clearly can avoid any confusion in the reader about who is speaking, or which part of the text is dialogue and which isn’t.

Use quotation marks

Dialogue in your novel should be enclosed within quotation marks. As mentioned above, you can use either singles or doubles depending on your preference:

"Hello! What brings you here?" she said.
'Hello! What brings you here?' she said.

Notice that all of the speech is contained within these quotation marks. This includes punctuation that is part of that speech (like the question mark).

Start a new paragraph for each speaker

This is crucial for making your dialogue clear and concise. We want readers to be able to fully grasp which characters are speaking and when – so make sure that for every new speaker, you begin a new paragraph.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "I really don't want to see you right now."
"I had to come," he answered.

Begin each line of dialogue with an indentation

In fiction, every paragraph except the one at the start of a chapter or scene should be indented. My blogging software doesn’t allow me to show you this with my general dialogue examples above (bah, sorry, blogs aren’t built for indents), but here is a screenshot containing an example from one of my fully formatted manuscripts:

Do you see how the first line of each paragraph is positioned further in? That’s the indent. And you can see how it applies to the first line of dialogue, too. Here’s an example with a longer segment of dialogue:

Each new line of dialogue, even the ones that only take up a single line, is indented.

If you’d like to download a manuscript template with indents already applied, visit my manuscript formatting blog post, which has a free downloadable template.

Punctuating dialogue in your novel

Where to place your punctuation

New authors especially tend to be unsure about where to place the punctuation in their dialogue. The rule here is if the punctuation belongs to the dialogue, it goes inside the quotation marks. So for instance, a character asking a question or exclaiming something would look like this:

"Why are you crying?" she asked.
"I'm not crying!" he snapped back.

The question mark and the exclamation mark both belong to the dialogue.

But what happens when the dialogue doesn’t require a question mark or an exclamation point? What do you use then? This depends on whether there are any dialogue tags or action beats.

Dialogue tags and action beats

Dialogue tags are those little words that highlight who spoke: she said, he said, she cried. If you use a dialogue tag like this, you need a comma inside the quotation marks:

"I'm not sure what I'm doing," she said.

If there is no dialogue tag, and the dialogue simply ends, we use a period inside the quotation marks:

"I'm not sure what I'm doing."

Action beats are other narrative elements used to identify the speaker – they’re usually behaviours that follow or precede the dialogue. Action beats act as their own unique sentence and save you the trouble of using a dialogue tag. Here’s how this would be written:

"I'm not sure what I'm doing." She bit her lip, as if trying not to cry.

Pauses and trailing-off speech

When a character trails off or pauses during their speech, we indicate this with ellipses.

"I'm not sure…"
"I'm not sure… Maybe we could…"

Dialogue interrupted by an action

Your character might perform an action while in the flow of speaking. The easiest and simplest way to punctuate this is by using commas within the dialogue, and keeping the action outside of the dialogue, like this:

"Okay, here's the plan. I think we should go here, and," he rifled through the papers and maps, "if we don't find what we're looking for, we can move on."

Dialogue interrupted by another speaker

Your character might be interrupted by another character, particularly during a pretty lively debate or an argument! We indicate this with a long dash called an em dash at the end of the dialogue. Here’s what this looks like:

"I have no idea what—"
"You never have any idea! That's part of the problem," she argued.
"But—"
"No. I'm done talking to you."

To create an em dash, on a Mac, you can press option + shift + the dash (-) key. On Windows, there are a few ways you can do it. If you have a numeric keypad, you can press control and the minus (-) sign. If you don’t have a numeric keypad, it’s trickier. In the Windows version of Word, you can navigate to Insert > Symbol and click on More Symbols. You’ll then have to look through the punctuation section to find the em dash. You can also just copy and paste it from anywhere on the web. Here’s an em dash if you want to do that instead: —

Still stuck on how to punctuate and format your dialogue?

If you’re still stuck or confused, there are lots of great reference books out there to help authors. In the UK, The Penguin Guide to Punctuation is a wonderful little reference book. It has a whole chapter on quotation marks, covering how to punctuate and format dialogue and other quotes in books.

For those in the US, The Chicago Manual of Style is the go-to reference book for all things punctuation and formatting, although it’s written for editors and their textbook is pretty chunky! That being said, they have a lot of brilliant online resources too.

For a more in-depth look at dialogue overall, including writing dialogue that drives a story and making each character’s speech unique, try Dialogue: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Effective Dialogue by Gloria Kempton.

Don’t worry too much about making the odd mistake here or there – we all do it, and no one expects an early draft of a manuscript to be perfect. That’s what editors are for – to help you weed out any lingering errors or anything that will jar the reader out of the story. Good luck!

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If you’re looking for help with your book, check out my editorial services.

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