Quotation marks in dialogue

In dialogue, begin a new paragraph to mark a change in speaker.

“Mom, his name is Willie, not William. A thousand times I’ve told you, it’s Willie.”

“Willie is a derivative of William, Lester. Surely his birth certificate doesn’t have Willie on it, and I like calling people by their proper names.”

“Yes, it does, ma’am. My mother named me Willie K. Mason.”

—Gloria Naylor

If a single speaker utters more than one paragraph, introduce each paragraph with quotation marks, but do not use closing quotation marks until the end of the speech.

Exercises:

Quotation marks 1

Quotation marks 2

Related topics:

Periods and commas with quotation marks

Introducing quotations