WITH TAG: “If I wanted your opinion, I would give it to you,” said the drill instructor.

WITHOUT TAG: “If I wanted your opinion, I would give it to you.”

2.  Begin a new paragraph when you switch from one speaker to the next. It helps readers figure out who’s speaking.

“Take my spare pistol,” Lex Luthor said.

“Not my style,” Batman said.

“Suit yourself.  I plan to live through this.”

3. Like the dialogue tags for sentences, dialogue tags for questions and exclamations should not be capitalized.

“Was this before or after you threatened to eat a district attorney?” the Senator asked.

“I plead not guilty by reason of my own badassery!” said Agent Orange.

“It is my professional duty to remind you to shut your damn trap,” Agent Orange’s long-suffering lawyer said.

4.  When a line of dialogue is addressed to a person or people, separate the addressed person/group from the rest of the sentence with commas.

“I can help you, Jim, but I’ll need a grenade launcher.”

“Right on, man,” said Jim.

“Ready, boys?” asked Monica.

5.  Quotation marks ending a sentence should come after any other punctuation.

Example: “Check out any of the above lines,” said B. Mac.

WRONG: “This shouldn’t look right”, said B. Mac.

WRONG: “Do you see what’s wrong with this question mark”? asked B. Mac.

6.  When a line of dialogue is interrupted by the dialogue tag, don’t capitalize the second clause like it’s a new sentence.

“You have upset Mr. Bigglesworth,” said Dr. Evil, “and when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die!”

6.1  The first word of a line of dialogue should be capitalized even if it isn’t the first word of the sentence.

The politician sang, “My name is Willie O’Dea.  They’re hanging me for perjury.”  Incidentally, those are perhaps the only two lines of the song that are safe for work. 

7.  When a line of dialogue is interrupted by another line of dialogue, end the first line with an em-dash (–).

James Bond said, “I always thought M was a randomly assigned initial, I had no idea it stood for–”

“Utter one more syllable and I’ll have you killed,” said M.

For more tips, I’d recommend checking out How to Punctuate Dialogue at the Editor’s Blog and Dialog Tags.

1. Please do not ever use more than one exclamation mark at time.  It looks awful!!!
2. Even if you’re writing a heated conversation, please don’t end a string of sentences with exclamation marks!  It will look really strange!  I wouldn’t recommend it! In a heated conversation, readers can infer that the characters are shouting at each other even if the sentence ends with a period.
3. If you’re inclined to capitalize words for emphasis, 1) don’t and 2) if you do, please do so super-sparingly.  (No, really, just a FEW times in the manuscript, PLEASE.  It’s SO HARD to read when AUTHORS just seemingly use all-caps AT RANDOM).

1.  Please don’t use multiple exclamation points or question marks. It’s far less likely to suggest that the character is really surprised than that the author is really inexperienced.  It’s cheesy.

• REJECTION:  “I hate you, Martha!!!!”
• REJECTION: “How could you do that to me??”

2.  I recommend against giving the narrator exclamation points. “John turned around.  Then a ninja burst through the ceiling!”  And then the editor rejected the manuscript!

3.  SMILEY FACES ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE IN PROFESSIONAL WORK. If your novel manuscript, query or proposal use any kind of emoticon, your submission is definitely (X_X).

4. Please use exclamation points sparingly. Strings of exclamations are generally disorientating and hard to process. “I’m surly! You’re not listening to me! That is unacceptable! I’m getting even surlier!”   If you use exclamations too often, they will become diluted and lose their zing.

5. Please be REALLY careful about capitalizing sentences for emphasis. “AND NOW YOU DIE, MR. BOND!”  I wouldn’t even consider doing it more than once or twice per novel.  And even that might be unnecessarily risky.

There is never any reason for a novelist to use more than one exclamation mark or question mark at a time.

No matter how excited your characters are, they can’t end their sentences with a string of exclamation marks (“Thanks!!!”)  No matter how quizzical they are, they can’t use more than one question mark, either.  “Really, B. Mac???”  Really.  It looks amateurish, whether you’re writing dialogue, narration, titles, blurbs or synopses.

Trios of periods (ellipses) are more acceptable.  For example, if you want to make someone sound like he’s trailing off in conversation, an ellipsis is probably an appropriate way to end his sentence.  (“Yeah, about that…”) However, ellipses are harder to use in narration.  A narrator that trails off will probably raise pacing issues.

Also, please try to avoid using too many exclamation marks. If most of the sentences in a paragraph end with an exclamation, it will probably feel cheesy and distracting. As a rule of thumb, a ten sentence passage shouldn’t have more than three exclamations.