long time since I did English. Pluperfect is the combining of the past particple with the auxilary verb. I think lol and its a long time since I did it but I think Nate had exciting adventures as head of the Secret Service. 'had exciting' is the pluperfect as its describing events that have happened before the present conversation or observation. I personally would place a retrsopsective conversation in italics but no idea if that is the correct way of handing it. I am guessing you are recounting a conversation to someone else?
Quote. I am guessing you are recounting a conversation to someone else? Correct guess. Example below. She thought about that day. Remembered him saying ... ... Dearest one, my heart desires you. And she had replied ... Oh my love. She smirked at the thought now, but then she had cried when he had shown her the ring and asked ... Darling will you marry me.
She thought about that day. Remembered him saying ... ... Dearest one, my heart desires you. And she had replied ... Oh my love. She smirked at the thought now, but then she had cried when he had shown her the ring and asked ... Darling will you marry me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For the examples you give above, the day is specific, so you would probably use past simple tense, after you anchor it in previous time with past perfect: She thought about that day, when he had said (OR said) his heart desired her. She had replied that he was her love. She smirked at the thought now, but at that time she had cried when he showed her the ring and asked if she would marry him.
Dialogue is a literal representation of what was said. That does not change due to when the narrator recounts it. Only the tense of the wording outside the dialogue fragments changes - narrative, dialogue tags, and beats.
The OP mentioned 'a restropective conversation'. This is often rendered in reported speech, as I did, rather than the actual dialogue. If you are just showing what was actually said, as Cog says, it would not change tense.
Punctuation could be as follows: She thought about that day. She remembered him saying: 'Dearest one, my heart desires you,' and she had replied, 'Oh, my love.' She smirked at the thought now, but then, she had cried when he had shown her the ring and asked, 'Darling, will you marry me?' However, I know that colons are disliked on this forum, along with semicolons. I guess US English would require double instead of single speech marks.
The single quotes are for UK English only. Change it to double quotes for everywhere else (and even the UK is moving toward double quotes).
I feel it is important not to mislead people here. British magazines and newspapers sometimes use US style now. However, in the printing of novels, particularly more literary-style novels, for English, Canadian, Australian, Indian and other writers in British-influenced countries--not only 'the UK'--they should be aware that the national patterns generally keep to the original British standards. Academic journals in Britiain normally require the British standards for punctuation, not the US. Canada and Australia have the most variation and leaning towards US standards, India hardly any at all.
That is my experience also, if anything the move is towards italicising rather than double quotes. I would personally italicise the conversation that is being recounted, because its like quoting a book etc
Italicising rather than quotes? I don't recall ever having encountered that. Do you mind giving examples? In my experience, publications in the UK for the most part still use single quotes. It's rare to see double quotes for speech.
More for quotes from books than speech (which is where we would have originally used the double quotation marks). But I have noticed a trend recently for emphasis and past tense recounting to be placed in italics. Places where traditionally punctuation would have been used. I don't have any particular books, I have read a lot recently. Which is why for a recounted conversation I would probably use italics as well because it is quoting something that has happened.
