Puncutation Rules for Conversation Quotation

When you write a conversation, your most important goal is making sure your reader understands who is talking. The following rules are easy to follow and will make sure that your reader doesn't have to backtrack in the story (isn't that annoying?) to find out who said what!

1. Every time a new person speaks, you need to start a new paragraph (even if each person only speaks a line or two).

George said, "Jane, did you hear that noise last night?"

"Hear what?" asked Jane, "You mean your snoring?"

2.If the same person speaks twice, with description or narration in between, you do not start a new paragraph.Put the quotation marks around what they actually say and be sure it is clear who is talking.

Steve, my husband's French cousin, had an unusual haircut: rounded in front, sticking up on top, and short all over. "Obviously French," said my husband, "very sophisticated, very cool." I was somewhat less impressed, but I could tell my husband was thinking about asking me to cut his hair that way. Finally, he confessed, "I was going to ask you to cut my hair like Steve's, because I thought it might make me look at bit more debonair. I've changed my mind though, after his sister told me that their mother cuts his hair and everyone at school makes fun of him." "

Oh . . . uh, sorry," I said. I'd been trying to imagine what my husband would look like with a brown bowl on his head. "Guess even the French like to save money."

3.Unlike quoting a literary or news source, when you are using conversation, you do not have to indent on right hand side for a long quote.You just use the regular paragraph format.

4.If a person speaks for more than one paragraph: you quotation marks before their first word, then before the first word of each new paragraph and at the end of their whole speech.You do not put ending quotation marks at the end of a paragraph if the person is continuing to speak (no interruption for narration or description) in the next paragraph.

My Grandfather pulled on a blade of grass and said, "Did I ever tell you about your Mom when she was little ? xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (continue on for whole paragraph, there is no quotation mark at end).

"She was so funny when she was in the third grade. After school one day, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (finish paragraph but still no ending quotation marks).

"At her wedding, I thought I was going to cry because I loved her so much. But your Grandma cried so much that I laughed instead." Big tears rolled down his face now as he remembered that day.

Notice the ending quotation marks after "instead." The "Big tears..." sentence is description, so there aren't any quotation marks around it.

• Remember--quotation marks go around the words that are actually said.
• If you forget how to do this, flip open a novel and follow what is done there.