“No, Aaron, no, this is it. There’s nothing we can do this time. The money’s gone. I –” and here the tears that had been gathering at the corners of her eyes threatened to spill over “– I think we’re in a lot of trouble right now.” In the bolded bit of this passage, I was unsure where to place the hyphens. Do I have it correct now or are they hyphens in the wrong place?
First of all, it wouldn't be hyphens. It would be em-dashes (—), which are denoted in manuscript as a pair of hyphens (--). However, em-dashes are used for interrupted speech, as when someone cuts in with their own speech. What you have is a pause, or trailing off, which is denoted by an ellipsis: Note the capitalization of The tears that had been gathering at the corners of her eyes threatened to spill over. This is a beat, not a speech tag. It is a full sentence describing an action by the speaker, so it begins with a capitalized word, and ends with a period. The following dialog piece does not begin with an ellipsis, because there's no suc thing as "trailing in", or a leading pause. See He said, she said - Mechanics of Dialogue
Seriously, shorten that bit of description to simply: "The tears threatened to spill over" Cog, cheers for that because I've never understood what em-dashes were! The rest of your post was very informative so thanks
mckk... what you suggest won't make sense unless it's already been mentioned that there were tears somewhere [see example below]... that said, i agree that so much detail isn't necessary...
This was pretty useful! So if I do write interrupted speech, would this be okay: He was furious at her. "Shut up, now--" "--What did you just say?" Also, how is it in regards to spacing?
I'm assuming that second dialogue fragment it the interruption. That being the case, it would not begin with an em-dash. The continuation of speech after an interruption does begin with an em-dash, however.
