Punction help!

Hey, I need some help with punctuation. I would like one of my characters to stop saying a word as it's coming out of it mouth. How do I do this in quotations?

“We all loved Julia as much as you, George, but she’s gone and ran away with that bast-“ He paused.

Is this correct?

 

Yes, that is correct, but it would be with an em dash instead of a single dash. In Microsoft Word you would type "--" to make an em dash.

Also you would not need to put the "he paused," using the em dash shows the reader he stopped or got interrupted.

 

yup!... ditto that...

 

if you did put 'he paused' it should be lower case 'h' for 'he'

 

sorry, kate, but that's incorrect, since 'he paused' is not a dialog tag [one can't 'pause' words], thus must be a separate sentence, beginning with a capital...

 

Oh, see what you mean. Yes, you're right.

 

Thanks for the tips. I'm still getting a grammar error in Word 2010. Should I ignore it, or what am I still doing wrong?

 

You could use an ellipsis ( as in ... ) if you think that's more suitable than an Em dash, but I'd also recomend an em dash.

It's incorrect because "He" has a capital make it "he".

 

Microsoft Word will give you errors all the time and not always for real errors. It is far from perfect. That is why it is good to have some links bookmarked as well for grammar, punctuation and spelling etc. Unfortunately you cannot rely just on Word.

Note that if you did the em dash correctly it will not look like this in Word:

“We all loved Julia as much as you, George, but she’s gone and ran away with that bast--“

It will have changed itself into one solid piece. I myself cannot always get it to work, so I just copy and paste an em dash I already have typed out when I need one. But to get one made (at least in the newest version) all you have to do is type "--" and then press the space bar and it should automatically do it for you.

As far as the error it is showing you, you should have already gotten rid of the "He paused," it is redundant and not needed. Using the em dash means exactly the same thing as saying "He paused."

 

This is how the sentence should be:

"We all loved Julia as much as you, George, but she's gone and ran off with that bast -- Now I don't mean to rub salt in fresh wounds, George. I just think you should really start thinking about moving on."

However if you are going to have interrupting speech between two people it cannot be in the same quotations. So it would look something like this:

"Get out of my way you bast--"

"--No you get out of my way!"