Everytime I have problem with something in the book I put it on my question list. Here are the questions. Please reply "question number"- reply 1. “I’m cold,” the boy said, or “I’m cold,” said the boy 2. He stood up and came up to the window. “What the hell?” Or: He stood up and came to the window. “What the hell?” 3. They call him O.D. , so … (with the second dot) Or They call him O.D, so ... 4. “John,” he said, “Are you OK?” (big letter?) Or “John,” he said, “are you OK?” 5. “Not again,” he said changing the radio station. Some sad song was being played. “No, not this one,” he moaned. Should the dialog be separated by the additional info “about the song” or should I write it in the same line. 6. She turned around and said. “Hi!” Or She turned around and said , “hi!/Hi!” (coma or full stop, capital or small letter?)
Some of your questions will be answered in this blog entry: He said, she said - Mechanics of Dialogue.
...either one is ok... which is better to use depends on the rest of the piece... ...neither is good... in the first, you repeat 'up' and in the second, you didn't separate narrative and dialog... and in both 'came' doesn't work unless the narrator is behind the window... ...you can't drop the second... they're not regular punctuation marks there, but used only to signify an abbreviation, so can't be used for one initial and not the other... ...fyi, it's not a 'big' letter but a 'capital' one... and since that word is a continuation of the same sentence, it can't be capitalized... only the first word of a quote/sentence is... ...since the speaker is the same and the narrative is related, it can all go together in the same paragraph, with no separation for the dialog... ...or, if you wanted to, the second line could be moved down, to emphasize the dialog... publishers' editors will sometimes apply their own 'house style' to such things... ...can't have a period before dialog that's introduced with 'said'... and like all dialog, it still has to start with a capital...
Unless it's a proper noun, or falls under some other capitalization rule other than position in a sentence.
good job Maia. The only thing I can add, is that in the following example the comma should come right after the period. They call him O.D. , so … (with the second dot) So I believeit should be like this. They call him O.D., so . . .
