Learning Dialogue with Mr. Seahorse!

In fifth grade, students include dialogue in their writing. Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse provides some examples of how to correctly punctuate different sentence types within dialogue. Take a look!

The first sentence shows how to punctuate a statement:

"It's time for me to lay my eggs," she said.

Notice that the sentence ends with comma, instead of a period, which is placed inside the quotation marks. Also, the next word is not capitalized.



The next bit of dialogue is a question:

"Can I help?" asked Mr. Seahorse.

Notice that the question mark goes inside the quotation marks and the following word is NOT capitalized.



Next up is an exclamation:

"Oh, yes. Thank you!" said Mrs. Seahorse.

It has an exclamation point inside the quotation marks, and it is followed by a lower case letter.



The final example is the trickiest one!  This is a type of dialogue where the description of who ssaid it interrupts the dialogue:

I'll take good care of our eggs," said Mr. Seahorse, "I promise."

Notice that there is a comma after the first part of the statement and a comma after the name of the person who spoke. This is also how you introduce a bit of dialogue.

For example:

Mrs. Long said, "Check back here if you need an example of how to punctuate dialogue."