How To Use Dashes In Dialogue
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2 the weary traveler forgot something in the airport bathroom her plane ticket.
How to use dashes in dialogue. Use em dashes outside the quotation marks to set off a bit of action without a speech verb. Use an em dash with an exclamation point or question mark but not with a comma a colon or a semi colon and only rarely with a period. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Joyce does this as does william gaddis. Emphasize important or essential information em dashes can be used to emphasize important or essential information midsentence or at the end of sentences.
We can use double dashes to denote when a side of dialogue is interrupted by lines of scene description it continues over the scene description then is picked up in the next side of dialogue. Alt ctrl period. Although colons and commas can serve the same function em dashes create a more dramatic effect. Ctrl shift spacebar. We can also use dashes in scene description.
Nonbreaking space in word for windows. Dashes are used to separate groups of words not to separate parts of words like a hyphen does. Ctrl alt minus key on the numeric keypad nonbreaking space in word for mac. It s clear that if this was dialogue the dashes would still be needed for the interruption. An em dash is also useful in dialogue to show a break in thought that s abrupt rather than a trailing thought that gets an ellipsis.
Em dash in word for windows. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom. With an abrupt change of thought or an idea that breaks into the flow of a sentence use dashes to set off the words their example people grew impatient the parade was already thirty minutes behind schedule and began to leave. Look over there she pointed to the corner by the bookshelves do not merely use commas because in such cases there is no speech verb and therefore it isn t a dialogue tag and can t be punctuated like one. I i don t know what you re talking about denied the politician.
An example from the opening page of the apartment written by billy wilder and i a l. I practice it but my only conceptual understanding is that the dash dialogue format allows you to group a character s entire range of actions thoughts and words into one chunk headed by a dash. To break up dialogue.