Which is the correct way to punctuate this dialogue with ellipses?
Below are four alternate dialogues that I am confused between. I'd like to know which is the correctly punctuated one. Also please explain how to use ellipses in a dialogue which is interrupted by a dialogue tag. The tag has to come between the trailing off and on.
Now, I was a captor in Chirag’s realm, waiting for my execution.
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it quick. But painless…?” Chirag said, “…no promises made.” OR
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it quick…but painless?” Chirag said, “…no promises made.” OR
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it quick. But painless…?” Chirag said. “No promises made.” OR
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it quick. But painless…?” Chirag said, “no promises made.”
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1 answer
Aside from the third item being correct, as others have noted, the punctuation around the dialogue tag reflects how it interacts with your two pieces of dialogue.
An ellipsis indicates that the speaker is trailing off at the end, or gradually building up to speaking at the beginning. You can have an ellipsis at the beginning of a piece of dialogue, but the text has to support it.
"So if you're not into men, and you're not into women, that makes you..."
"...Aromantic, I guess?" he said with a shrug.
In your snippet, No promises made. is a complete sentence. It has a crisp beginning. Chirag isn't trailing into it, so there's no need for a beginning ellipsis. And since the dialogue tag Chirag said is completing the thought of the first sentence, it correctly ends with a period.
If you want a trail-in and trail-out with the same person, it would run something like this:
“Don’t worry, I’ll try to make it quick..." Chirag smiled with too many teeth. "...but I'm not making any promises about painless."
In this case, the dialogue tag is a complete sentence with a period. Your trail-in text is a continuation of your trail-out text, so it starts with an ellipsis and a lowercase letter.
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