Hi, I have just signed up to this site and hope that I will be able to get some help with my writing. I am stuck on how to punctuate dialogue within a tale told by one character and using single and double speech marks. A whole chapter is based on a character relaying to another the events of a specific day . Within which there are words spoken by others. How do these best get punctuated ? I have scanned the internet for how to use speech marks for long pieces of dialogue spanning many paragraphs and it would seem the correct way to do this is to use opening speech marks at the beginning of each paragraph but not closing ones until the end of last paragraph. However if i use the suggested single quote marks around another character's speech within the tale at the beginning of a paragraph I get a weird looking triple speech mark i.e "' and the same at the end. Is this acceptable? I am probably failing miserably to explain this but I hope someone gets what I mean and can help please. Thanks
If it's a whole chapter told by a character, I'd suggest writing it as if it was just any other prose without dialogue tags whatsoever. Merely switch the POV to the character telling it, and tell the tale. If you do this, you can use simple dialogue tags / rules for in-tale dialogue. After all, every tale we tell is pretty much a dialogue, isn't it?
I literally did this the other day and I took this approach, but then I use " for dialogue. I used ' for the inner dialogue. I still might also italicize it. You -dont- have to do it this way. “‘Look, bull!’ you say.” Her arms flew out. “‘Where?’ I say." She pointed. “‘There, arrrrgh!’” Wringing her hands as she feigned screaming, Namazu then made the longest ‘moo’ sound she possibly could before bursting out laughing. “You so funny, you tear trousers jumping over fence!” The forum changed it from curling quotes to straight Fixed it. But honestly, there's no hard or fast rule (for most of everything when it comes to these things). The most important thing is -consistency-. If you do something once in your book/writing, keep it the same if you do it later. Most people consider consistency as the key to making your work look professional. “‘Look, bull!’ you say.” Her arms flew out. “‘Where?’ I say." She pointed. “‘There, arrrrgh!’” Wringing her hands as she feigned screaming, Namazu then made the longest ‘moo’ sound she possibly could before bursting out laughing. “You so funny, you tear trousers jumping over fence!” That makes it stand out for me, so I probably will italicize it now. You might not want to even use quotes... it's all down to personal preference. “Look, bull! you say.” Her arms flew out. “Where? I say." She pointed. “There, arrrrgh!” Wringing her hands as she feigned screaming, Namazu then made the longest ‘moo’ sound she possibly could before bursting out laughing. “You so funny, you tear trousers jumping over fence!” If you dont use " and instead use ' for your quotations, then flip it around, obviously. Or try something else. It's up to you, just keep it consistent.
