Quotes, dialog, and tracking who is speaking.

#1
Some good fast rules:

  • Use double quotes (" ") to show speech.  This is the standard English way of enclosing speech. Using [], <>, or other characters is confusing to many English speakers. 


Example:

"Did you see that?" John asked. 
Mary gave him a sly look. "No, I did not see that", Mary replied. 


  • Punctuation that is part of the quote should go inside the quotes. This is opposed to punctuation that is not part of the quote.


Example:

"Did you see that?" John asked.  (here john is asking the question)
Mary was shocked! Did he really just ask "Did you see that"?   (Here Mary is questioning the quote)

Putting ending periods or commas inside the quotes is up to you. Different English variants (American/British) do this differently, and even native speakers in each country get these confused. Just be consistent and don't worry about it.


Grammar Girl has some good advice:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-quotation-marks




Script style dialog.
First recommendation - don't do it. It's hard to read. If you must use a script style format, put the character that is speaking at the beginning, not at the end. Putting it at the end is OK for an attribution, but not for dialog. Example:

Script way:
Charlie: "I swear on my mother's grave that I will avenge you or die trying!"

Attribute way - not right for dialog, but right for the tag line of a book or chapter:
"I swear on my mother's grave that I will avenge you or die trying" - Charlie.  

Most readable way (the Do do it way!):

Charlie shook his fist at the sky. "I Swear on my mother's grave that I will avenge you or die trying!" He shouted to the heavens.

Again, Grammar Girl is pretty good:

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-write-dialogue

RE: Quotes, dialog, and tracking who is speaking.

#2
Some other thoughts:

Dialogue should have as much resemblance to the way people 'really talk' as the plot of the story does to the way people 'really live.' If you're writing a story about a middle-aged manager who goes to the grocery store to buy some milk while pondering whether the daily grind of work and taxes has sucked the meaning from his life, fill it full of all the hemming, hawing, digressions, and niceties that populate real speech. You're writing slice-of-life fiction so it's fine to have slice-of-life dialogue.

If you're writing a story about a fourteen year old who discovers a magical portal to another realm, becomes a dragon rider, and helps save the world from demonic invasion, your dialogue should have purpose. It should express character, increase tension, or help move the plot forward.
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Re: Quotes, dialog, and tracking who is speaking.

#4
Dialog is verbatim character speech and should be enclosed in quotation marks. Quotes get quoted in Quotation marks.
Every speaker gets his own paragraph which helps to define this. However, associated text, such as exposition or description, does not need to be offset from the dialog. Sub-vocalized statements or thoughts, do not necessarily need quote marking, as they are not spoken. Usually thoughts are tagged (see Below) , or offset in italics, though  quote marks are occasionally used, quote marks alone do not segregate speech from thoughts, so are normally superseded by the other methods.

Tracking who is speaking is most normally done by tagging. (He said, Jeff retorted, or for thoughts, I thought, etc) to nominate the speaker. Its common to see this used at the beginning, or middle, or end of a sentence as a separate phrase, as it is not a quote itself. Other methods include action tagging, where attention is brought to a dialog by a character's movements or activity. In some cases where speakers alternate in a set order, one then the other, tagging may not be required. The decider is clarity. If it is clear who is verbalizing, then it is.



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