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Q&A How should dialog be formatted?

Is there any "official" rule that I should keep in mind when formatting character dialog? Line breaks, placement of quotes, mixing dialog with action descriptions etc. For example, I want to build...

1 answer  ·  posted 13y ago by Ido Tamir‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T01:18:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/1794
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Ido Tamir‭ · 2019-12-08T01:18:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Is there any "official" rule that I should keep in mind when formatting character dialog? Line breaks, placement of quotes, mixing dialog with action descriptions etc.

For example, I want to build a sentence like: "Look Jones, _this_ will be yours someday" and describe the speaker point to some building during the word "this". How would you format such a sentence?

1. "Look Jones," Dan pointed at the castle, "this will be yours someday"

2. "Look Jones, this" Dan pointed at the castle "will be yours someday"

3. etc.

As you can see, I have problems with comma placement, quote placement and general formatting.

Advice?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2011-02-27T12:12:45Z (over 13 years ago)
Original score: 12