This chapter includes common dialogue formatting errors and the devil that almost everyone gets wrong: dialogue tags.
Disclaimer: this is gonna be a long chapter, but so much goes into dialogue and their tags that I'm not going to be able to cover everything without wanting to die a little by the end of it. So even though not every single thing about dialogue and their tags will be in here, I hope you enjoy the chapter regardless. Please don't comment adding on to what's already been said or saying I missed something. I'm aware of that, so please don't.
Read the disclaimer in the beginning of this book before you comment; any comments being argumentative or referring to things I already covered in the disclaimer will be deleted.
Content warning: opinions
This is by far the most common error I have ever seen.
Dialogue tags.
Back when I was doing reviews on Quotev, almost every single review mentioned dialogue tags. Now, on Wattpad, it's the same way.
It has become such a common error that whenever I see an author that does them correctly, I literally write in my notes:
AUTHOR DOES DIALOGUE TAGS CORRECTLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 💃💃💃💃💃❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😍😍😍😍😍😍🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳
I'm not kidding. That's from one of the reviews I did for the Eclipse Awards.
During my time judging, I believe I have found three stories that do dialogue tags correctly. Three.
It's such a common error that if you do them wrong, I hope you don't feel bad. Trust me, almost every single person is doing dialogue tags wrong. You might be doing them wrong without realizing it.
So, let's cover some of the incorrect ways I've seen dialogue tags written.
Incorrect:
"Hi." He said.
"Hi." he said.
"Are you okay?" He asked.
"What are you doing?!" He shouted.
"Get out!" He yelled.
"I can't believe this." jungkook muttered.
Correct:
"Hi," he said.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"What are you doing?!" he shouted.
"Get out!" he yelled.
"I can't believe this," Jungkook muttered.
Did you notice a pattern?
He is not a proper noun, but Jungkook is (it's a name). Notice which ones are capitalized in the "correct" section. Only Jungkook, right?
Why?
Dialogue tags are not a new sentence; they are a continuation of the dialogue. Even if the dialogue ends with ? or !, the tag will still be lowercase.
I cannot tell you how many times I've seen authors so close to doing tags right, but they get the special punctuation wrong. By that I mean, they'll capitalize the tag when it's after a ? or !.
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