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Q&A The difference between two speech formats

About 99+% of books printed in English use quote marks for dialog, not dashes. Why are you considering using dashes? Is there some advantage to this for your story? Like any rules of writing, you...

posted 8y ago by Jay‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:57:40Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20521
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Jay‭ · 2019-12-08T04:57:40Z (over 4 years ago)
About 99+% of books printed in English use quote marks for dialog, not dashes.

Why are you considering using dashes? Is there some advantage to this for your story?

Like any rules of writing, you can always break the rules if you have a good reason. But like any rules of writing, I would strongly advise you not to break the rules unless you do have a good reason. Breaking the rules just for the sake of breaking the rules -- "I won't be bound by a bunch of silly rules", "I want my writing to be daring and avant guarde", etc -- is almost always just distracting and annoying to the reader.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-01-19T15:40:17Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 4