Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How to break up dialog if some of the dialog is not in quotes?

I have a technical question. In my story, I've several chunks of dialog where one character's response is a grunt or a groan or rude sound or a swear word, or whatever, but is not in quotes. As a...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by DPT‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question dialogue
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:28:01Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/34764
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar DPT‭ · 2019-12-08T08:28:01Z (almost 5 years ago)
I have a technical question.

In my story, I've several chunks of dialog where one character's response is a grunt or a groan or rude sound or a swear word, or whatever, but is not in quotes. As a fake example:

> William said, “Sweetie, raising greyhounds is not easy. But it is the family business.” Elisabeth groaned at the turn in conversation. She rubbed the back of her neck. William said, “Of course, you don’t need to take over the family business.”

Is this better as is, ^^^ shown above, a single paragraph, or should it be broken into three, as below?

> William said, “Sweetie, raising greyhounds is not easy. But it is the family business.”
> 
> Elisabeth groaned at the turn in conversation. She rubbed the back of her neck.
> 
> William said, “Of course, you don’t need to take over the family business.”

I assume either is OK (but don't really know) and am curious if one is better than the other. Thanks in advance.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-04-02T22:18:03Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 5