Dreamland Review Archive

Maybe this is love, (T)

With that being said, although I don't have a rule to explain this, the problem comes from the 'got', which I changed to 'gets'. But I don't have a firm rule to explain that.

iii. DIALOGUE

You are inconsistent with your dialogue tag and action tag punctuation.

A dialogue tag is anything that describes the way something is said (ex. he screamed, she whispered, I asked).

An action tag is anything that implies who is speaking by using an action (ex. he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked).

Some verbs can be used as both, such as 'he groaned.' If you want to say he said something in a groan, it's a dialogue tag. If you want to say he said something and then he groaned, it's an action tag.

Now, placing these into your writing. Here are the rules:

When you have a dialogue tag following or proceeding a spoken sentence, the beginning of the spoken sentence is always capitalized and if your dialogue tag is after, then you end the spoken sentence with a comma and begin the dialogue tag with a lowercase. If the dialogue tag comes before, then you place a comma after the dialogue tag and begin the spoken sentence with a capital.

Examples:

"Hello," he said.

OR

He said, "Hello."

When you have a dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences, you

a) either pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or you

b) make it all one sentence and end the dialogue tag with a comma and begin the spoke sentence with a lowercase.

Examples:

"Hello," he said. "It's nice out today."

OR

"Hello." He said, "It's nice out today."

OR

"Hello," he said, "it's nice out today."

Whenever you have an exclamation mark, question mark or a name that must be capitalized, you simply add your mark, capitalize the name and do not change any other punctuation.

Examples:

"Hello," I said.

OR

"Hello?" she asked.

When you are using action tags, you follow the regular rules of writing and end the spoken sentence with a period and begin the action tag with a capital.

Examples:

"Hello." He grinned.

He grinned. "Hello."

If you follow these rules, you shouldn't struggle with the punctuation following or proceeding dialogue.

iv. TYPOS

You have some typos that can be chalked up to a simple mistype. I recommend downloading Grammarly or typing up your chapter on Word to catch more of those. Wattpad often lets some stuff slip by.

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