Uncertain about your dialogue tags and punctuation? Perhaps this discussion will help.

Patterns of Dialogue and Dialogue Tags

For the purposes of this article, “dialogue” refers to what is placed inside double quotation marks to capture conversation, with the end mark at the end before the closing quotes. “Dialogue tag” refers to the optional parts placed outside the quotation marks describing the speaker and how they’re speaking. These can be placed before, after, or in the middle of the dialogue.

Let’s talk about positioning in regards to the dialogue and dialogue tags.

Stand-Alone Dialogue

Dialogue can stand on its own without dialogue tags.

Examples

1. “Malaham disappeared.”
2. “Did you eat the cookie?”
3. “Give me the gun!”
4. “Er–“
5. “Well…”

The above examples stand independently, grammatically speaking. See below when the dialogue is used in conjunction with dialogue tags.

Dialogue Tags Before

Placing tags before the dialogue does not affect the punctuation or structure of the stand-alone dialogue described above.

Some examples of dialogue tagged at the beginning:

1. She said, “Malaham disappeared.”
2. He asked his son, “Did you eat the cookie?”
3. The sinister figure demanded, “Give me the gun!”
4. He stammered, “Er–”
5. She replied, “Well…”

Note in this case, the punctuation following the dialogue tag is a comma.

After the Dialogue

Tagging after the dialogue is a little more interesting. While we end the complete sentence with a period, within the quotation the punctuation just before the closing quotation mark only sometimes differs from its stand-alone version.

If the conversation is punctuated with a period in the stand-alone version, when you add a dialogue tag to the end, you change the period to a comma. But, we leave other punctuation alone.

Some examples of dialogue tags after the conversation to compare with our earlier examples:

1. “Malaham disappeared,” she whispered.
2. “Did you eat the cookie?” the father asked.
3. “Give me the gun!” the sinister figure demanded.
4. “Er–” he stammered.
5. “Well…” she replied.

Visually, the after-pattern can be pictured as a combination of quoted conversation followed by the dialogue tag:

Note that in the first example we went from

"Malaham disappeared."

to

"Malaham disappeared," she whispered.

Once I added the dialogue tag, the period before the closing quotation mark needed to change to a comma.

However, the period is the only punctuation at the end of a piece of dialogue that changes.

You can see this in the remaining examples listed above. The interrogative and imperative quotations keep their end mark before the closing quotes, as do the examples where the speaker is interrupted or trails off.

Tags in the Middle

So what happens when you place dialogue tags in the middle?

If it’s in the middle of a sentence of dialogue, we use commas to punctuate. The model is much like the afterwards case, but we use a comma for the punctuation before the second bit of dialogue.

The pattern would be as follows:

Examples:

1. “Malaham,” she whispered, “disappeared.”
2. “Did you eat,” the father asked, “the cookie?”
3. “Give me,” the sinister figure demanded, “the gun!”

Note, since the dialogue tag interrupts a sentence, the dialogue tag is punctuated at the end with a comma, and the second piece of dialogue begins with a lower-case letter.

Can other punctuation be used? Yes, in situations where the speaker is interrupted, a writer can use dashes instead of commas:

"Toranna, could you--" the fire engine's siren overwhelmed the sound of his voice "--stop?"

More?

Want additional info? I have future blog plots planned, and, if you are in doubt, consult the ultimate resource: the Chicago Manual of Style.