How should dialog be formatted?

Question

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?

Answer 1

Character dialogue has fairly straight forward formatting once you understand the rules of it. First, dialogue should always be in quotation marks. Secondly, every time a new character speaks you should start a new paragraph. Description/action can break up a sentence of dialogue in the way that you have described and, while there is no hard and fast rules that you absolutely have to stick to since you're own personal style will dictate it, you should make sure that the action/description adds to your narrative. If a specific emphasis is important to you, you can consider using underlines/italics on the word you wish to stress. However, if that's not your style. I'd suggest formatting your sentence to something along the lines of this:

"Look, Jones," Dan said, pointing to the castle, "this will all be yours someday."

Breaking the sentence up allows for the reader to apply their own emphasis to the text.

What matters is that you are able to best convey what you want to happen with clarity. If you want/need more examples or explanation feel free to ask me, or if you want a quick check, look to some of your favorites books and see what the author does with their formatting.