Hey, everyone, welcome to another English grammar lesson. Today we're going to be covering
quotation marks in dialogue.
So, whenever somebody speaks in a sentence, there's always
what I like to call a "speaker tag" that shows that someone is actually talking. The most
common speaker tag in English is "said,"—like "he said," "she said," "I said"—whatever.
But you could also have stuff like "I whispered" or "he yelled" or "she replied." There are
thousands of different speaker tags that you can use, but the point is that when you see
these phrases, it usually means someone is actually speaking. Not always but usually.
Anyway, in today’s video, we’re just going to be talking about how to write lines of
dialogue when the speaker tag comes before the spoken material—so, like, at the beginning
of the sentence. Let’s take a look at an example, without any quotation marks or other
stuff in there yet: I said hello there. Okay, so, in this sentence, what is our speaker
tag? What words show that someone might actually be talking here? Answer is… "I said." Okay,
so if that's the speaker tag, then we have to look at the rest of the sentence and see
if that's something that someone would actually say; we've got to see if it makes sense to
be spoken out loud. And it does. It makes sense for someone to say "Hello there." Okay,
so what do we do then? Well, since the words “hello there” are the ones actually being
spoken, we put quotation marks around them. And notice how, at the end of the sentence,
the quotation marks go on the outside of the period—very important. Now, we have two
more things to do. The first thing is that we need to separate the speaker tag from the
stuff that's actually being said. And we do that with a comma. And the last thing we need
to do is capitalize the first word of the spoken material. Why? Well, because that's
the first word of this person's sentence. They're speaking a sentence, so we've got
to capitalize their first word. Okay, let's see if you can do a couple. Here's the sentence,
without any quotation marks or anything else: He asked do you guys want to go to the mall?
All right, first step: what is our speaker tag? What words show that someone might actually
be talking? Answer is... "He asked." So, now that we've found that, we need to read the
rest of the sentence and see if that's something that makes sense for someone to actually say.
"Do you guys want to go to the mall?" Yeah—okay, yeah, that makes sense. So, the next step
is to separate the speaker tag from the spoken material. And remember, we do that with a
comma. And the final step is to capitalize the first word of the spoken material because
that's the first word of this guy’s sentence. Three more… She said I need to go home now.
Okay, find your speaker tag. Boom: "She said." Now, read the rest of it. Does that make sense
for someone to actually say? Yes, it does. So, we throw some quotation marks up around
it. Boom. Now we've got to separate the speaker tag away from the spoken material, so we throw
a comma in there. And the last thing we've got to do is capitalize the first word of
this person's sentence, but it already is capitalized, so we are good. Two more… Mark
said that he needed to leave at 5. Okay, find your speaker tag. Should be… “Mark said.”
Now, read the rest of the sentence. Does that make sense for someone to actually say? And
the answer here is no. This does not make any sense to say out loud. Think about it.
Think about someone saying these words out loud: "That he needed to leave at 5." It makes
no sense. So what does that mean? Well, it means that no one's actually talking in this
sentence. We've got the idea of somebody talking, but it's not written in a way that requires
us to use quotation marks. So, in this situation, we do not do anything; we leave this sentence
just as it is. So that’s something you’ve got to watch out for. You can’t just see
a speaker tag and think, “Ooh, quotations! I’ve got to use quotation marks!” Because
that's not how it works. You have to actually read the rest of the sentence to see if it
makes sense for someone to say out loud. Okay, last one: The librarian whispered please keep
it down. All right, what's the speaker tag? Good: “the librarian whispered”—this
whole thing. So, read the rest of it; does that make sense for someone to say out loud?
Yes, it does. Cool, so throw some quotation marks up around it. Then we've gotta separate
the tag from the spoken material, and after we do that, we've got to capitalize the first
word of the spoken sentence. Cool! So, that's it for part one of our quotation marks in
dialogue series. But don’t worry, we're going to be working through more and more
of this concept in the next couple videos. Either way, whether you came here for a refresher
or are just now learning this stuff for the first time, I hope this video helped. Be sure
to check out the free practice down in the description, and—uh—we’ll see you next
time. Thanks.