(British English)
• Quotation marks.
Put direct dialogue inside quotation marks, also known as inverted commas. In the UK it’s more common to use single inverted commas than double.
‘Do it like this.’
If you want to include an attribution after the spoken words, use a comma after the speech and before the second inverted comma:
‘Do it like this,’ she said.
If you want to put the attribution first, the comma comes after the dialogue tag.
She said, ‘Do it like this.’
The full stop goes inside the second inverted comma[,] as it is part of the direct speech. All the direct speech is inside the inverted commas/quotation marks.
Interrupted dialogue is set out like this in a single sentence.
‘Do it like this,’ she said, ‘or it will look wrong.’
You can also split the sentence, [like this:]
‘Do it like this,’ she said. ‘Or it will look wrong.’
In both cases, all the speech is within the inverted commas.
If you want to write interrupted speech, do it like this:
‘Do it like this’ – she paused to think – ‘or else.’
If the last punctuation point in a line of dialogue is a question, set it out with the question mark replacing the comma or full stop.
‘Do it like this?’
All the speech is still within the inverted commas. The same with an exclamation mark:
I said, ‘Do it like this!’
• Dialogue tags.
Speech attribution tags are always lower case.
‘Do it like this,’ she said.
If you want to put a full stop at the end of the speech[,] don’t follow it with a new sentence consisting of the dialogue tag.
‘Do it like this,’ she said.
is good.
[X] Do it like this.’ She said.
is wrong.
You don’t always need to use dialogue tags. Every line of dialogue does not need to be attributed. [recte: Not every line of dialogue needs to be attributed.]
‘Do it like this,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ he replied.
‘Like this.’
‘I see.’
As long as the reader knows who is speaking and when, you don’t need to hammer home the point by continually repeating ‘said Emma’, ‘said Peter’, ‘she mentioned’, ‘he explained’. Your dialogue will quickly feel clunky if you do that. It reinforces the presence of a writer directing operations and detracts from the impression that people are talking, which is what you want to achieve with your dialogue.
Unless there’s a very good reason for it, keep dialogue tags simple. ‘He said’ or ‘said Emma’ will do just fine. That way, if you need to use ‘mentioned,’ ‘described,’ ‘explained’ or anything else that directs a reader’s attention to the way a character speaks, it will have impact. Otherwise, the most effective written dialogue is where what the characters are saying speaks for itself.
https://www.writers-online.co.uk/how-to-write...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/b...
(American English)
Write each person's spoken words, however brief, as a separate paragraph. Use commas to set off dialogue tags such as "she said" or "he explained." If one person's speech goes on for more than one paragraph, use quotation marks to open the dialogue at the beginning of each paragraph. However, do not use closing quotation marks until the end of the final paragraph where that character is speaking.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/pu...
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/da...
