"This is grammatically incorrect." She said.

A public-service announcement, copy-pasted from another thread, because I see this sort of thing far too often in Internet fiction.

Things like 'he said' and 'she asked' are extensions of the sentence within the quotation-marks, and should not be capitalised. Furthermore, full stops preceding 'he said's should be turned into commas, though other punctuation-marks, like ? and !, should remain as they are. Some examples:

Correct: "I want to eat that kitten, " he said. Incorrect: "I want to eat that kitten." He said.

Correct: "Do you want to eat that kitten?" she asked. Incorrect: "Do you want to eat that kitten?" She asked.

Make sense?

I make this mistake a lot, thanks, also while we're at it avoid the green grocer's comma. You know "orange's for sale"

@OP: thank you. When I criticise other people's writing, sometimes I have to type what you just said so many times, I wonder why I don't just create a macro for it. And it doesn't make me very happy.

That's an apostrophe, not a comma.

So then...for example...

"Don't touch that," he said. "It's poisonous."

Correct or incorrect? Does having the person continue to speak after the "he said" change anything?

Its still good, I think.

The only thing that having the person continue speaking would change is the punctuation of the 'he said', not of the actual speech. The full stop after 'he said' is correct if the spoken sentence ended at the comma preceding the 'he said'. If it interrupts the sentence, you should use a comma.

So if your character is saying 'Don't touch that. It's poisonous,' you would break that as '"Don't touch that," he said. "It's poisonous."'

If your character is saying 'You shouldn't touch that, because it's poisonous,' you would break that as '"You shouldn't touch that," he said, "because it's poisonous."'

^ Not an expert on the use of language, but I imagine that even in the given example, you could get away with the comma in the version without "because".

That's missing the point, though.

/me applauds

^^ Yeah, I think that's correct. Or at least, it's how I've always done it.

edited 28th Dec '11 11:29:09 AM by Chubert

Many thanks. I constantly run into something like

He said "This is a sentence,"

which looks absolutely cruddy—it's like XKCD's unmatched parenthesis, my brain just really wants something else to be there and it isn't.

Have an Internet.

This thread was just so fucking necessary.

Yeah, as an extension of the sentence, 'he said' does not have to end a sentence if you don't want it to. So this:

"I want to eat that kitten," he said, "for it is crunchy and good with ketchup."

... would be just as grammatically-correct as this:

"I want to eat that kitten," he said. "It looks tasty."

That's kind of depressing.

^ I wish it didn't have to be, but :l

Ignore me

edited 28th Dec '11 3:02:46 PM by Masterofchaos

@cityofmist

Thank you! That makes perfect sense and is by far the best explanation I've read of how to punctuate within quotations. Thanks again.

Words are our stock in trade. Grammar is one of our tools. Learn to use them.

Said is a verb. The words spoken are the object of that verb. Strictly speaking, the comma isn't necessary, and you can fight over whether the punctuation goes inside or outside the quotes.

To get even pickier, there's text as text, which doesn't take a comma. Examples: A simple "No" would suffice. He tossed an "I don't know" over his shoulder.

Also, according to the Chicago Manual of Style, adverbs are never hyphenated. The thread title would become "'This is gramatically incorrect.' She said." However, not everyone follows CMOS.

</grammar nazi>

More specifically, the CMOS (as the name suggests) is a guide for American English. As you may have noticed from my location, that's not always that relevant.

What about this case:

"[censored],” I force the words out of my mouth.

Should I change that to:

"[censored].” I force the words out of my mouth.

A period or a comma?! What should I use?

"I force the words out of my mouth" is not a dialogue tag, so you would use a period.

You use a comma if it's something like: [censored], I said, forcing the words out of my mouth.

edited 3rd Jan '12 6:17:54 AM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

I see.

I learned this after reading LotR.

edited 3rd Jan '12 7:23:45 AM by Teraus

"Eating kittens, though?" he inquired to himself, staring perplexed at the computer screen.

Ah, I don't know if this has been said or not because it looks like the question was overlooked, but if you want to break up the phrase, Don't touch that, it's poisonous, you would likely write it as, "Don't touch that," he said, "it's poisonous." The sentence "he" is saying is still a sentence, and only needs one period. Unless you are making it two sentences (i.e. "Don't touch that. It's poisonous.") where in that case you would write it as, "Don't touch that," he said. "It's poisonous."

Basically, imagine the speaker writing out his own sentence, and then use commas, quotation marks, and extensions as necessary.

In portuguese works, that would be like this:

- Don't touch that - he said -, it's poisonous.

Weird, I know. But with dashes instead of hyphens.

edited 3rd Jan '12 2:00:28 PM by Teraus

In Finnish*

- Don't touch that, he said, - it's poisonous.

(I'm not entirely sure about the position of that second comma though.)