“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.
“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement.
“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”
Dear Tumblr,
Does anyone know why this is? It really bothers me and I find myself actively breaking this rule all the time, because I feel like the comma often weakens the dialog involved–only to be corrected later, literally every time I show a piece to anyone. I am generally OK with bowing to grammatical structures needed for clarity but this one is really arbitrary to me and I can’t see why putting a period at the end of a dialog that, were it a first person narration, you would put a period after. No one ever seems confused by what I mean, they just say that it is incorrect and correct me. Is there something I am missing here?
Confused Grammar Disciple
English BA here.
So, when you use the period, it essentially denotes that the dialog is separate from whatever the action is the character is performing, whereas using a comma signifies that the dialog and action are happening at the same time or in conjunction with one another. It helps bring clarity to the reader imagining the scene.
If that helps.“Right now I’m providing an example of how if the dialogue’s part of the action you should use a comma,” I type while sitting in my bed. If I had used a period there, ‘I type while sitting in my bed’ would have been an independent thought or action.
“This is another example of how if the action happens after the writing, you use a period.” I put my computer down, stand up, and do a really cool backflip. That was definitely a different thought or action than the dialogue, as well as being sick as hell.
“But if I were to do the backflip while explaining shit I’d definitely use a comma,” I elaborate, backflipping again. I’m a master of doing both exposition and acrobatics at the same time.
“I didn’t do any backflips at all, actually. I was lying to you.” I finish this example and click ‘reblog’.
(via darktypes)
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