Hello, Everyone.

It's time for everyone's favourite topic:  How to punctuate
speech in prose.

Audience:  Boo!  Ssss!  Gettitoff!

There have been a fair few 'fics out recently, even some by
otherwise excellent writers, that have been making various
mistakes in this area that mar otherwise very good works.

I find this disappointing.  It's not hard to do it right, and
it makes your 'fic more appealing to readers and easier to
read.

This isn't a rant, by the way... or at least, it's not 
intended to be.  To be honest, it's driven by self-interest:
When an otherwise good 'fic has bad punctuation in it then for 
me, it kind of puts a dampener on my enjoyment of the 'fic.

So if you'll stick with me, I'll give a little lesson by way
of giving a few examples.  (Not from actual 'fics, by the
way, so stop sweating out there.)

WRONG:  "Hello, Nene." said Sylia.
WRONG:  "Hello, Nene."  Said Sylia.
WRONG:  "Hello, Nene.", said Sylia.
WRONG:  "Hello, Nene," Said Sylia.
RIGHT:  "Hello, Nene," said Sylia.

The most common construction.  Note the capitalization;
it's important.  Note also that *only* periods (full stops 
for Oz and British readers) are replaced by commas in this 
way; other punctuation is preserved unchanged:

WRONG:  "Hello, Nene!," said Sylia.
WRONG:  "Hello, Nene!", exclaimed Sylia.
RIGHT:  "Hello, Nene!" shouted Sylia.

WRONG:  "Daijoubu, Nene?" Asked Sylia.
RIGHT:  "Daijoubu, Nene?" asked Sylia.

Note that sometimes the author actually intends to stop
the (narrative) sentence with the quotation, and sometimes
it's not very obvious:

"It's not right!"  Priss laughed.

This is an example of poor writing, because the *only*
indicators that this is in fact two sentences and not
one is the extra space used to divide sentences, and
that the use of "laughed" is questionable in the description
of speech, though not uncommon.

(Typographical note:  Sentences should be separated by two
spaces, not one, though the use of one space is becoming
more accepted.  HTML, which *enforces* one space, isn't
helping matters.)

A better example:

"Don't shoot!"  Priss spun at the sudden shout, and... etc.

Another common construction is this:

WRONG:  Priss said. "Who the hell are you?!"
WRONG:  Priss said: "Who the hell are you?!"
RIGHT:  Priss said, "Who the hell are you?!"

Again, note the capitalization.

Another, less-common construction is to insert narration into
speech:

WRONG:  "I'm Gary" said the trembling man "and I'm here..."
WRONG:  "I'm Gary," said the trembling man, "And I'm here..."
RIGHT:  "I'm Gary," said the trembling man, "and I'm here..."
MAYBE:  "I'm Gary," said the trembling man.  "And I'm here..."

In this case, whether the "maybe" case is right or not
depends on whether the author intends what the reader will
interpret, and that is that Gary is uttering two sentences
here.  The construction given in "right" is *only* used 
when the narration is inserted in the middle of a character's
sentence.

This isn't complete, but it's good enough for the moment.

Questions I will answer to the best of my ability.  Rants 
and flames I'll ignore unless someone proves to me some
point on which I'm wrong (except the bit about space, which
is, um, "subject to some debate") in which case I shall 
eat humble pie.

I hope this has helped someone.

--
David Eddy -- Senior Consultant, Progress Software Melbourne
dje@progress.com

Screening Coordinator, Melbourne Anime Society
My fanfics are achived at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Towers/8341