12 Tips for Punctuating Sentences in Your Novel

The Dash ( — )

The dash is the secret weapon of the writing realm—particularly to the writing student who has just discovered them and vowed to never use commas again! (Please don't make this vow; and yes, I was screaming.) Writers sometimes use dashes for two of the same primary uses that commas serve—to mark additional information and to separate clauses/phrases. So why might we use a dash instead of commas or parentheses? The dash marks a more emphasized aside point for those instances where you want the extra information or clarification to be more emphasized than the text surrounding it.

The shadow—groaning with terrible exasperation at the three of them not listening to him—threw back his hood and stepped into the light so that they could see him.

All of their eyes widened when they recognized who this hooded figure was—the blackbear border patrol officer that Blake had thrown moldy coffee onto.

Let me emphasize that the dash “—” is not the same as the hyphen “-”. As you can see, the dash is longer and is not a default key on your keyboard; in fact, most websites won't even let you create a dash, only copy and paste it in. We create a dash by writing a word, followed immediately by two hyphens, and then another word—with no spaces between any of it. (E.g. no--spaces) When you hit the space-bar after finishing the second word, your word processor should create the dash automatically. If not, you may need to look into the options and instructions of the the writing program that you happen to be using.

The Hyphen ( - )

Other than for joining words (like city-slicker, for instance) the hyphen only serves one real function within writing. We can use it to signal a very sudden interruption to a character's dialogue. This comes in handy when your character is about to say something, you don't really know how to finish the thought, and so you have either the story or some other character mercifully interrupt them (or, you know, when something in the story actually genuinely causes an interruption.)

“Mr. Blackbear but how-” Blake began to say.

“Did I get here?” The Blackbear (whose name was Atticus, for those kind souls who care about the names off all characters and animals) interrupted. “I'm part of the story, you numbskulls. Why do you think we have a fourth-wall border patrol! The fourth wall keeps stuff like this from happening, and idiots like you from destroying our world with your reckless wall-breaking. Haven't you ever read 'Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe'? This sort of thing ALWAYS happens. And my name is Atticus; don't be ignorant. Mr Blackbear … geez.”

Ellipses ( … )

Sometimes, in writing, you will find three periods in a row. We use these to mark a verbal pause in the text, as if the narrator or characters were speaking and then … paused … as well as you let a word linger (both of these usually in dialogue). These are known as the ellipses (or, less commonly, as the dreaded three dot curse of the beginning writer. Not really, I just made that up. I'm sorry for tricking you). I say this not because there is anything inherently wrong with the ellipses, only because beginning writers … tend to overuse them in grievous proportion in order to create unnecessary pauses or to punctuate with something other than a hyphen, semicolon, and comma. The overuse is so bad, in most first drafts, that I generally recommend replacing 99/100 ellipses in the text.

“But … Ryan Reynolds,” Blake said, looking between Atticus and Totodile.

“Don't you ' but Ryan Reynolds' me. You need to figure out how to fix this mess.” Atticus said.

“Don't look at me, this was your stupid idea …” Totodile said, giving Blake a look.

Quotation Marks and Apostrophes ( “” ) ( ' )

As you probably know, quotation marks are used most commonly to signal where a character's dialogue begins. You place a quote ( “ ) before the dialogue begins and an end-quote ( ” ) at the end. Apostrophes are also fairly common—used to mark the joining place between contractions like the following: can't, won't, we'll, and y'all (yes, y'all, the proper contraction between you and all. I won't back down on this). However, both punctuation marks have a secret power. Have you ever been talking to someone about something and wanted to use a word super sarcastically, so you lifted your index and middle fingers of both hands up by your ears like a T-rex when you said the word? Well what you were actually making were quotation marks, that some “clever” tutorial writers describe as T-rex fingers. These quotation marks can also be used to draw attention to a word, as a word, instead of for its meaning (like when I talk about whether “irregardless” is a word).

“But wait!” one of you Gerard Butler types may shout with great passion, “What if one of our characters wants to be sarcastic, draw attention to a word, or even quote the dialogue from another character? A meta-quote if you will.” Very astute, Gerard. Yes, that would be a problem if the apostrophe did not serve that precise purpose. Yes, you can use quotations inside of quotations if you change the inside quotation marks to apostrophes.

“Come on Blake,” Ivysaur said, looking him in the eyes with her green ones. “Didn't you learn anything about how to fix a story when you were out having those fancy English department dinner parties and ranting about Oxford commas and whether 'irregardless' is a word?”

How to Punctuate Parentheses and Quotes.

Last, we come to the final question of how to properly punctuate parentheses and quotes. This skill doesn't so much give you any particular power as much as it simply shows any potential publishing company or reader that you know what you're doing. With parentheses, think of them as a little black hole in the middle of your sentence or paragraph (like this one), with only internal punctuation if the parenthetical text requires it. (Unless, of course, your parenthetical sentence is not part of any other sentence and simply stands on its own, like this one. In these cases you will actually have a period, question mark, or exclamation point at the end of the parentheses.) We'll call the ones that are inside sentences and which do not have ending punctuation of their own, “Black Hole Parentheses,” and ones that are autonomous of other sentences and do have their own ending punctuation, “Freestanding Parentheses.”

Black Hole Parentheses

Blake thought carefully about what his options were (as he really hadn't discussed much of relevance in those fancy English parties, mostly just how Richard III was the most underrated Shakespearean play and how he would duel with swords anyone who disagreed) but the problem seemed unsolvable.

Freestanding Parentheses

His literary mistake of killing the Narraror was simply to grandiose in the scales of the ridiculous universe he'd created to be easily fixed. (You see, by the law of audience expectation and plot balance within a story, the solution cannot be more simple than the problem or else the problem wasn't all that complicated in the first place. And if you reveal that, you'll just annoy your readers for having tricked them into thinking the problem was more complex than what it really was. The solution also has to be suited to the nature of the problem. Otherwise, you'd have complicated emotional dramas being resolved with sword-fights, and that makes no sense. So Blake's solution would have to be grandiose, grievous in scale, and utterly ridiculous, if it was to work.)

Quotes are a little bit more tricky. There are three types of quotes; we'll call them cold quotes, pre-warmed quotes, and post-warmed quotes. A cold quote is a quote that stands by itself, free of any introduction or dialogue tag (he said, she said, etc … ). With a cold quote, you simply punctuate all of the dialogue as if it were normal text. A pre-warmed quote is one that has an introduction (Blake looked at him and said, “Hey.”) Pre-warmed quotes require a comma after the non-quotation text (Blake looked at him and said,) but the quotation is punctuated just like a cold quote. A post-warmed quote is the most common type of quote, where you have a quotation, followed by a dialogue tag (“Hey,” Blake said.). The punctuation for a post-warmed quotation is a little more complex. If you end the sentence on an exclamation point or question mark, it's written the same as a cold quote [as with (“Hey!” Blake said.) or (“Hey?” Blake said.)]. But if you end on a period, which should generally be the case, you replace the period in a post-warmed quote with a comma (“Hey,” Blake said.). The general idea behind this, I believe, is that the dialogue tag is part of the same sentence as the quotation … but then again, the whole thing could just be arbitrary. Regardless, it is what readers and publishing companies are used to reading and what will make the flow of your story smoothest for them.

Cold Quotation

“Well, have you thought of something?” Atticus had been watching Blake with a furry blackbear glare that looked something between intimidating and adorable.

Pre-warmed Quotation

Blake looked at Atticus, and then at Totodile, and then at Ivysaur and said, “I had one idea. If there were a new narrator, then the world could be recreated and all of us could go back home … well, almost all of us could go back home.

Post-warmed Quotation

The four of them looked at one-another for a moment.

“Not it,” Blake said, putting his index finger beside his nose.

“Not it,” Totodile said, putting her paw by her snout.

“Not it,” Atticus said, putting a massive, blackbear claw beside his nose.

“I hate all of you,” Ivysaur said, briefly, before there was an explosion of light and color.

Blake, Totodile, and Atticus woke up on the shore of a riverbank, close to where Blake had driven his pickup truck into the heart of the previous narrator. The three of them looked at themselves, then at one another, and then began to chuckle with smiles of nervousness and relief. They had made it, and saved the world (which, granted, they had destroyed in the first place). Then they looked up into the sky where, as if scratched out of the clouds with a giant feline claw, was written: “You all will pay”.

The Asterisk, Emoticons, and Other Symbols

While legitimate for texting, roleplay, other forms of non-official writing, and writing in other languages, none of these are recognized forms of punctuation in American English writing. If you want to write in a niche for young adults who are texting one another or something like that, feel free to use these symbols in the same way you would use, brb, lol, jk, and other forms of text-speak. That is, feel free to use it when one character sends another one a text-message, but not for any sort of dialogue or words created by the narrator. If you do, I'm pretty sure that Atticus knows an otter named Liam, who is part of the grammar police. If you use these marks of punctuation, he will hunt you down and he will find you.

(Part 2 of 2. Click here for Part 1)

Ending Note

Please note that there are different standards of punctuation in different countries/languages and even based on the publisher's guidelines that different schools and companies seem to religiously adhere to (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc...). This tutorial is simply a look for how punctuation can serve to a standard English/American novel, and was composed by a writer who was primarily taught in the MLA style. If you find a way of punctuating that serves you, your story, or your language better than this one, by all means use it and simply use this guide as a way to start assessing what sort of effect your own style of punctuation might have on your readers. Also, please remember that this is as much a learning exercise for me as I hope it will be for you. I'm still a few decades away from being a complete master of English grammar, and so my work may contain holes of missing information that I am not aware of. It's also possible that there are some mistakes hiding within this large amount of text, and places where I'm not communicating as clearly as I think I am. If you find any such problems, I will be very grateful if you send me a private note so that I can fix them. Together, I hope we can make this work as helpful for writers as possible.

Sincerely and theatrically,

Blake

Write-a-Novel Exercise 7.5

Today's exercise is two-fold.

First, go through each of the tips above, look at the example sentences, and write an original sentence of your own which contains the emphasized elements in each example (e.g. if the example sentence is about how to use a hyphen, create your own original sentence with a hyphen.)

Second, choose a single chapter in Act I of your novel which best exemplifies the pace and tone of the rest of the story. Keep in mind when choosing this chapter, that it will be the one critiqued by the group, the one you will use in all of these exercises, as well as the one you will use to cross reference with the rest of your novel when you work on your next draft (in order to transfer the same types of edits to those chapters as you have done to this one). Once you have chosen a chapter, use the tips listed above to redraft it.

Please do not participate in this exercise until you have a complete first draft of your novel. Criticism, given before a first draft is completed, has a powerful discouraging effect for the writer. Also, please abstain from making other sorts of edits to your chapter, as we want to make our focus as specific and precise as possible with each exercise.

For those critiquing, please make you suggestions only relevant to the topic at hand. We will be going through a large variety of editing exercises, and your critiques will serve best when given at the appropriate time. As always, please make your critiques honest and hold nothing back, while remaining polite and uplifting. We want to encourage one another to succeed by telling them the truth about their flaws while uplifting their strengths and potential.

Writers, I advise you to always keep a copy of every draft you've ever written, no matter how bad. The contrast is important for seeing your own abilities grow, as well as for teaching others later down the road. Additionally, having a backup copy of the original file will make you subconsciously feel free to redraft, cut, and change the text, as the original will always be there if you decide you liked it or some element of it better. So keep a record of all of the many drafts you will create.

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A Personal Update: This month, I am in Georgia. I've not had the pleasure of visiting any parks yet, but I did find some back woods where nobody lives and went freestyle hiking into the middle of nowhere. It was an exciting hike. I saw hundreds of giant yellow orb spiders, got my hair tangled in about a dozen trees and vines, and even got to see an otter! I've never seen an otter in the wild before, so the experience was pretty special to me. There were two beautiful black snakes (I believe one was a Black Racer and the other was an Eastern Indigo Snake), which were gorgeous.