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How to Write Dialogue in an Essay: Usage, Formatting, Punctuation Rules

Updated 09 Jul 2024

From narrative essays, personal reflections, psychology simulation reports, and English literature writing and scholarships, using dialogue in an essay can dramatically change a student’s chances of delivering a successful paper. However, there are specific rules that have to be considered. Many U.S. college students have failed such essays due to not learning how to write dialogue in an essay. Our writing guide provides clear definitions, cases of usage, formatting cases with examples, and MLA and APA dialogue rules that have to be known. Thankfully, once these rules are mastered, chances of getting low grades are really low! For best grades, consider turning to one of our creative  essay writers at EduBirdie to receive plagiarism-free and unique papers.

Essay Dialogue Definition & Purpose

As most might remember from school, dialogue represents a special literary device that helps writers to portray a conversation with two or more individuals involved. Dialogue in an essay can be implemented when writing fiction or nonfiction narrative work. As an example, working with (or citing) movies, plays, books or reports, its usage may even become obligatory for greater effect. However, one should not mistake dialogue with academic research necessity to directly quote from journals, books or any other sources.

The most crucial rule isn’t to confuse direct quotes with dialogues, which is a major mistake that most college students make. The main difference lies not only in formatting rules but in purpose. The purpose of dialogue is to be a part of a particular story, adding a creative or emotionally-charged touch. Unlike direct quotes that have the purpose of supporting claims made by an author word by word, they differ by primary intention.  

When Dialogue is Used in an Essay and Why

Naturally, cases of dialogue usage differ from paper to paper, yet the majority of writing assignments that include dialogue have a creative nature. It’s so because narration always tells a story and adds literary devices to support settings, writing style, and imagery. Psychological element of perception is extremely important, therefore, each sentence has to be creative. Dialogue in an essay adds power to imagery by allowing the target audience to live through the effect of an actual presence and character of the people involved.

Various dialogue simulations in Business Management, Education, or Psychology university assignments can require creative thinking, yet when students have to work on argumentative or persuasive essays, it’s recommended to use direct quoting instead to make argumentation reliable. Since our claim has to be strong or even supported by a source, citing an existing source is correct in such cases.

Likewise, students working on expository essays explain the mechanics of certain facts by providing definite facts. The general rule for understanding whether dialogue fits in your paper is to think about the importance of direct claims. If no claim has to be made, creative use of conversation is allowed. It helps to relate stories, knowledge, and the feeling of belonging to an audience.

For example, when one has to present conversations with friends or work colleagues, writing an argumentative paper, it is recommended to use direct quotes, marking it as "Personal Interview" or "Personal Conversation", when citing. College professors expect students to have objectivity and a correct attitude that shows a scientific approach. Turning to a dialogue essay is acceptable in narration or when the writer has to be reflective. Writing dialogue in an essay can be challenging, especially for legal topics, which is why utilizing a law essay writing service can help ensure your dialogue is clear, precise, and correctly formatted.

Approach this task as a report on speech, where there’s no need to include all details. Recreating it from one's memory, the writer uses dialogue to add depth, emotional background, or mood to explain the provided story's content. Remember that conversation has to capture the reader's attention, explain settings, and be realistic enough.

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How to Format Dialogue in an Essay

The most challenging part is how to format dialogue in an essay, yet with basic rules explained, it will not seem too difficult!

Note: Our writing guide focuses on U.S. English rules of grammar, which means that it’s always better to check twice due to possible differences in your country.

• Apply double quotation marks when signifying that character uses speech

For example: When I failed college exams, my mother told me, "You should try harder, son."

• When using quotes in quotes, use single quotation marks

As shown below: "I recall watching Colbert Report episode that said 'Politics and religion do not mix' and feeling amazed," the course instructor said.

• If conversation extends across more than one paragraph, implement quotation marks right where each paragraph starts. However, closing double quotes can only be implemented when character’s speech reaches its end

See this example: James smiled and said, "It might be difficult at first. If we choose another approach for mediation, we won't be concerned about privacy. Still, third party presence might irritate people like John and Mike. Let's hope it works out."

Another important issue that should be considered by students learning how to put dialogue in an essay relates to correct punctuation. We will use correct and incorrect examples for clearer referencing.

- If your used speech quotation locates at sentence end, always implement full stop. It should be inside inverted commas, as in here:  

Wrong use: His mother exclaimed, "Do your college homework right now, please".

Correct use: An old man commented, "This essay is worth gold."

- Speaking of questions or use of exclamation signs, there’s a rule that states if it’s related to character’s words, they should be placed inside quotation.

Incorrect: Johnny shouted, "This is against the rules"!

Correct: Linda commented, "Sounds right to me!"

- If quote belongs to another greater sentence that represents question or contains an exclamation in it, punctuation marks go beyond speech being marked.

Wrong quotation example: What would you think when professor says, "Have you seen additional grading rubric?"

Proper way: What did you do when your father shouted, "Where is Andrew"?

- If intended speech tag appears before you implement a quote, it is necessary to make it separate, therefore, writers put comma before quotation mark.

Wrong: His sister said, "I'm going to John's graduation tonight."

Correct: Mr. Brown said, "Essay writing online is possible".

- Now if conversation element appears after quotation marks, correct way is to place comma inside replica’s mark. Like this:

"Just make sure my tea is hot", my brother warned me as I went outside.

- Finally, if there is interruption in a phrase, it is necessary to put comma after the first part of used phrase. As explanatory part finishes (who speaks), comma is used once again. See our example:

"Not exactly," Tom said in teary voice, "It's plain wrong to think so."

Read also: To be confident in the explanatory part, read our guide about  how to write an explanatory essay

Now that we know how to quote dialogue in an essay, let us proceed with APA and MLA formatting peculiarities!

Read also: How to Write Dates with Commas Correctly?

Dialogue Formatting in APA and MLA essay formats

MLA formatting:

• Place dialogue in new paragraph, even if speech is really small.
• Use commas to separate speech tags.

He said, "Oh, dear! I think we forgot to invite Jamie."

• If character's speech is more than one paragraph, start every paragraph with inverted commas.
• Remember that final quotation mark is placed at paragraph's end.

During his graduation, he said, "I did not think that Social Psychology is right for me, but then I started working part-time at our local shelter. It was a time changing experience! "Thanks to my college professors, my parents, everyone who has made it possible today."

How to quote a conversation in an essay APA format:

• In APA format , if character in speech uses not much text, the same paragraph contains dialogue tags and quotes.
• Commas are used for dialogue tags separation as well as quoting.

Laura said, "I'm feeling tired. Can you help me with my assignment?"

• If speech is more than 40 words, inverted commas should be at the beginning of every paragraph, as well as at conversation's end.

During our meeting, he said, "Nothing can be as damaging as working at college assignments few hours before deadline." "No proofreading is done when student is always hurrying up. I recommend online writing services if one absolutely needs professional help and has no time."

• If your dialogue involves more than two people, each person has his or her own paragraph in essay text.

"Ashley Construction Group. How can I help you?" She said. "Stella? I think John asked you to text him this morning. Could you?" He exclaimed.

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How to Write Fabulous Dialogue [9 Tips + Examples]

About tom bromley.

Author, editor, tutor, and bestselling ghostwriter. Tom Bromley is the head of learning at Reedsy, where he has created their acclaimed course, 'How to Write a Novel.'

Good dialogue isn’t about quippy lines and dramatic pauses.

Good dialogue is about propelling the story forward, pulling the reader along, and fleshing out characters and their dynamics in front of readers. Well-written dialogue can take your story to a new level — you just have to unlock it.

In this article, I’ll break down the major steps of writing great dialogue, and provide exercises for you to practice your own dialogue on.

Here's how to write great dialogue in 9 steps:

1. Use quotation marks to signal speech

2. pace dialogue lines by three , 3. use action beats , 4. use ‘said’ as a dialogue tag  , 5. write scene-based dialogue, 6. model any talk on real life , 7. differentiate character voices, 8. "show, don't tell" information in conversation , 9. delete superfluous words, which dialogue tag are you.

Find out in just a minute.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Drama is life with all the boring bits cut out.”

Similarly, I could say that good dialogue in a novel is a real conversation without all the fluff — and with quotation marks. 

Imagine, for instance, if every scene with dialogue in your novel started out with:

'Hey, buddy! How are you doing?"

“Great! How are you?""

'Great! Long time no see! Parking was a nightmare, wasn’t it?"

Firstly, from a technical perspective, the quotation marks are inconsistent and incorrectly formatted. To learn about the mechanics of your dialogue and how to format it, we also wrote this full post on the topic that I recommend reading.

Secondly, from a novel perspective, such lines don’t add anything to the story. And finally, from a reading perspective, your readers will not want to sit through this over and over again. Readers are smart: they can infer that all these civilities occur. Which means that you can skip the small talk (unless it’s important to the story) to get to the heart of the dialogue from the get-go.  

For a more tangible example of this technique, check out the dialogue-driven opening to Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Unsheltered .

Screenwriter Cynthia Whitcomb once proposed an idea called the “Three-Beat Rule.” What this recommends, essentially, is to introduce a maximum of three dialogue “beats” (the short phrases in speech you can say without pausing for breath) at a time. Only after these three dialogue beats should you insert a dialogue tag, action beat, or another character’s speech.

Here’s an example from Jane Gardam’s short story, “Dangers”, in which the boy Jake is shooting an imaginary gun at his grandmother:

In theory, this sounds simple enough. In practice, however, it’s a bit more complicated than that, simply because dialogue conventions continue to change over time. There’s no way to condense “good dialogue” into a formula of three this, or two that. But if you’re just starting out and need a strict rule to help you along, then the Three-Beat Rule is a good place to begin experimenting.

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Let’s take a look at another kind of “beats” now — action beats.

Action beats are the descriptions of the expressions, movements, or even internal thoughts that accompany the speaker’s words. They’re always included in the same paragraph as the dialogue, so as to indicate that the person acting is also the person speaking.

On a technical level, action beats keep your writing varied, manage the pace of a dialogue-heavy scene, and break up the long list of lines ending in ‘he said’ or ‘she said’.

But on a character level, action beats are even more important because they can go a level deeper than dialogue and illustrate a character’s body language.

When we communicate, dialogue only forms a half of how we get across what we want to say. Body language is that missing half — which is why action beats are so important in visualizing a conversation, and can help you “show” rather than “tell” in writing.

Here’s a quick exercise to practice thinking about body language in the context of dialogue: imagine a short scene, where you are witnessing a conversation between two people from the opposite side of a restaurant or café. Because it’s noisy and you can’t hear what they are saying, describe the conversation through the use of body language only.

Remember, at the end of the day, action beats and spoken dialogue are partners in crime. These beats are a commonly used technique so you can find plenty of examples —  here’s one from  Never Let Me Go  by Kazuo Ishiguro . 

If there’s one golden rule in writing dialogue, it’s this: ‘said’ is your friend.

Yes, ‘said’ is nothing new. Yes, ‘said’ is used by all other authors out there already. But you know what? There’s a reason why ‘said’ is the king of dialogue tags: it works.

Pro-tip: While we cannot stress enough the importance of "said," sometimes you do need another dialogue tag. Download this free cheatsheet of 270+ other words for said to get yourself covered!

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Upgrade your dialogue with our list of 270 alternatives to “said.”

The thinking goes that ‘said’ is so unpretentious, so unassuming that it focuses readers’ attention on what’s most important on the page: the dialogue itself. As writer Elmore Leonard puts it: 

“Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But ‘said’ is far less intrusive than ‘grumbled,’ ‘gasped,’ ‘cautioned,’ ‘lied.’”

It might be tempting at times to turn towards other words for ‘said’ such as ‘exclaimed,’ or ‘declared,’ but my general rule of thumb is that in 90% of scenarios, ‘said’ is going to be the most effective dialogue tag for you to use while writing dialogue.

So now that we have several guidelines in place, this is a good spot to pause, reflect, and say that there’s no wrong or right way to write dialogue. It depends on the demands of the scene, the characters, and the story. Great dialogue isn’t about following this or that rule — but rather learning what technique to use when . 

If you stick to one rule the whole time — i.e. if you only use ‘said,’ or you finish every dialogue line with an action beat — you’ll wear out readers. Let’s see how unnaturally it plays out in the example below with Sophie and Ethan: 

All of which is to say: don’t be afraid to make exceptions to the rule if the scene asks for it. The key is to know when to switch up your dialogue structure or use of dialogue tags or action beats throughout a scene — and by extension, throughout your book.

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Dialogue isn’t always about writing grammatically perfect prose. The way a person speaks reflects the way a person is — and not all people are straight-A honor students who speak in impeccable English. In real life, the way people talk is fragmented, and punctuated by pauses.

That’s something that you should also keep in mind when you’re aiming to write authentic dialogue.

It can be tempting to think to yourself, “ Oh, I’ll try and slip in some exposition into my dialogue here to reveal important background information.” But if that results in an info-dump such as this — “ I’m just going to the well, Mother — the well that my brother, your son, tragically fell down five years ago ” — then you’ll probably want to take a step back and find a more organic, timely, and digestible way to incorporate that into your story.

Kay Adams is Michael’s date at his sister’s wedding in this scene. Her interest in his family is natural enough that the expository conversation doesn’t feel shoehorned in. 

A distinctive voice for each character is perhaps the most important element to get right in dialogue. Just as no one person in the world talks the same as each other, no one person in your book should also talk similarly.

To get this part of writing dialogue down pat, you need to start out by knowing your characters inside out. How does your character talk? Do they come with verbal quirks? Non-verbal quirks?

Jay Gatsby’s “old sport,” for example, gives him a distinctive, recognizable voice. It stands out because no one else has something as memorable about their speech. But more than that, it reveals something valuable about Gatsby’s character: he’s trying to impersonates a gentleman in his speech and lifestyle.

Likewise, think carefully about your character’s voice, and use catchphrases and similar quirks when they can say something about your character. 

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“Show, don’t tell” is one of the most oft-repeated rules in writing, and a conversation on the page can be a gold mine for “showing.”

Authors can use action beats and descriptions to provide clues for readers to read between the lines. Let’s revisit Sophie and Ethan in this example:

While Sophie claims she hasn’t been obsessing over this project all night, the actions in between her words indicate there’s nothing on her mind  but  work. The result is that you show , through the action beats vs. the dialogue, Sophie being hardworking—rather than telling it.

Show, Don't Tell

Master the golden rule of writing in 10 five-minute lessons.

As always when it comes to writing a novel: all roads lead back to The Edit, and the dialogue you’ve written is no exception.

So while you’re editing your novel at the end, you may find that a “less is more” mentality will be helpful. Remember to cut out the unnecessary bits of dialogue, so that you can focus on making sure the dialogue you  do  keep matters. Good writing is intentional and purposeful, always striving to keep the story going and readers engaged. The importance lies in quality rather than quantity. 

One point I haven’t addressed yet is repetition. If used well (i.e. with clear intention), repetition is a  literary device  that can help you build motifs in your writing. But when you find yourself repeating information in your dialogue, it might be a good time to revise your work. 

For instance, here’s a scene with Sophie and Ethan later on in the story: 

As I’ve mentioned before, good dialogue shows character — and dialogue itself is a playground where character dynamics play out. If you write and edit your dialogue with this in mind, then your dialogue will be sharper, cleaner, and more organic. 

I know that writing dialogue can be intimidating, especially if you don’t have much experience with it. But that should never keep you from including it in your work! Just remember that the more you practice — especially with the help of these tips — the better you’ll get.

And once you’re confident with the conversational content you can conjure up, follow along to the next part of our guide to see how you can punctuate and format your dialogue flawlessly .

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How to Write Dialogue: 7 Great Tips for Writers (With Examples)

By Hannah Yang

Great dialogue serves multiple purposes. It moves your plot forward. It develops your characters and it makes the story more engaging.

It’s not easy to do all these things at once, but when you master the art of writing dialogue, readers won’t be able to put your book down.

In this article, we will teach you the rules for writing dialogue and share our top dialogue tips that will make your story sing.

Dialogue Rules

How to format dialogue, 7 tips for writing dialogue in a story or book, dialogue examples.

Before we look at tips for writing powerful dialogue , let’s start with an overview of basic dialogue rules.

• Start a new paragraph each time there’s a new speaker. Whenever a new character begins to speak, you should give them their own paragraph. This rule makes it easier for the reader to follow the conversation.
• Keep all speech between quotation marks . Everything that a character says should go between quotation marks, including the final punctuation marks. For example, periods and commas should always come before the final quotation mark, not after.
• Don’t use end quotations for paragraphs within long speeches. If a single character speaks for such a long time that you break their speech up into multiple paragraphs, you should omit the quotation marks at the end of each paragraph until they stop talking. The final quotation mark indicates that their speech is over.
• Use single quotes when a character quotes someone else. Whenever you have a quote within a quote, you should use single quotation marks (e.g. She said, “He had me at ‘hello.’”)
• Dialogue tags are optional. A dialogue tag is anything that indicates which character is speaking and how, such as “she said,” “he whispered,” or “I shouted.” You can use dialogue tags if you want to give the reader more information about who’s speaking, but you can also choose to omit them if you want the dialogue to flow more naturally. We’ll be discussing more about this rule in our tips below.

Let’s walk through some examples of how to format dialogue .

The simplest formatting option is to write a line of speech without a dialogue tag. In this case, the entire line of speech goes within the quotation marks, including the period at the end.

• Example: “I think I need a nap.”

Another common formatting option is to write a single line of speech that ends with a dialogue tag.

Here, you should separate the speech from the dialogue tag with a comma, which should go inside the quotation marks.

• Example: “I think I need a nap,” Maria said.

You can also write a line of speech that starts with a dialogue tag. Again, you separate the dialogue tag with a comma, but this time, the comma goes outside the quotation marks.

• Example: Maria said, “I think I need a nap.”

As an alternative to a simple dialogue tag, you can write a line of speech accompanied by an action beat. In this case, you should use a period rather than a comma, because the action beat is a full sentence.

• Example: Maria sat down on the bed. “I think I need a nap.”

Finally, you can choose to include an action beat while the character is talking.

In this case, you would use em-dashes to separate the action from the dialogue, to indicate that the action happens without a pause in the speech.

• Example: “I think I need”—Maria sat down on the bed—“a nap.”

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can move on to the more nuanced aspects of writing dialogue.

Here are our seven favorite tips for writing strong, powerful dialogue that will keep your readers engaged.

Tip #1: Create Character Voices

Dialogue is a great way to reveal your characters. What your characters say, and how they say it, can tell us so much about what kind of people they are.

Some characters are witty and gregarious. Others are timid and unobtrusive.

Speech patterns vary drastically from person to person.

To make someone stop talking to them, one character might say “I would rather not talk about this right now,” while another might say, “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”

When you’re writing dialogue, think about your character’s education level, personality, and interests.

• What kind of slang do they use?
• Do they prefer long or short sentences?
• Do they ask questions or make assertions?

Each character should have their own voice.

Ideally, you want to write dialogue that lets your reader identify the person speaking at any point in your story just by looking at what’s between the quotation marks.

Tip #2: Write Realistic Dialogue

Good dialogue should sound natural. Listen to how people talk in real life and try to replicate it on the page when you write dialogue.

Don’t be afraid to break the rules of grammar, or to use an occasional exclamation point to punctuate dialogue.

It’s okay to use contractions , sentence fragments , and run-on sentences , even if you wouldn’t use them in other parts of the story.

This doesn’t mean that realistic dialogue should sound exactly like the way people speak in the real world.

If you’ve ever read a court transcript, you know that real-life speech is riddled with “ums” and “ahs” and repeated words and phrases. A few paragraphs of this might put your readers to sleep.

Compelling dialogue should sound like a real conversation, while still being wittier, smoother, and better worded than real speech.

Tip #3: Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

A dialogue tag is anything that tells the reader which character is talking within that same paragraph, such as “she said” or “I asked.”

When you’re writing dialogue, remember that simple dialogue tags are the most effective .

Often, you can omit dialogue tags after the conversation has started flowing, especially if only two characters are participating.

The reader will be able to keep up with who’s speaking as long as you start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes.

When you do need to use a dialogue tag, a simple “he said” or “she said” will do the trick.

Our brains generally skip over the word “said” when we’re reading, while other dialogue tags are a distraction.

A common mistake beginner writers make is to avoid using the word “said.”

Characters in amateur novels tend to mutter, whisper, declare, or chuckle at every line of dialogue. This feels overblown and distracts from the actual story.

Another common mistake is to attach an adverb to the word “said.” Characters in amateur novels rarely just say things—they have to say things loudly, quietly, cheerfully, or angrily.

If you’re writing great dialogue, readers should be able to figure out whether your character is cheerful or angry from what’s within the quotation marks.

The only exception to this rule is if the dialogue tag contradicts the dialogue itself. For example, consider this sentence:

• “You’ve ruined my life,” she said angrily.

The word “angrily” is redundant here because the words inside the quotation marks already imply that the character is speaking angrily.

In contrast, consider this sentence:

• “You’ve ruined my life,” she said thoughtfully.

Here, the word “thoughtfully” is well-placed because it contrasts with what we might otherwise assume. It adds an additional nuance to the sentence inside the quotation marks.

You can use the ProWritingAid dialogue check when you write dialogue to make sure your dialogue tags are pulling their weight and aren’t distracting readers from the main storyline.

Sign up for your free ProWritingAid account to check your dialogue tags today.

Tip #4: Balance Speech with Action

When you’re writing dialogue, you can use action beats —descriptions of body language or physical action—to show what each character is doing throughout the conversation.

Learning how to write action beats is an important component of learning how to write dialogue.

Good dialogue becomes even more interesting when the characters are doing something active at the same time.

You can watch people in real life, or even characters in movies, to see what kinds of body language they have. Some pick at their fingernails. Some pace the room. Some tap their feet on the floor.

Including physical action when writing dialogue can have multiple benefits:

• It changes the pace of your dialogue and makes the rhythm more interesting
• It prevents “white room syndrome,” which is when a scene feels like it’s happening in a white room because it’s all dialogue and no description
• It shows the reader who’s speaking without using speaker tags

You can decide how often to include physical descriptions in each scene. All dialogue has an ebb and flow to it, and you can use beats to control the pace of your dialogue scenes.

If you want a lot of tension in your scene, you can use fewer action beats to let the dialogue ping-pong back and forth.

If you want a slower scene, you can write dialogue that includes long, detailed action beats to help the reader relax.

You should start a separate sentence, or even a new paragraph, for each of these longer beats.

Tip #5: Write Conversations with Subtext

Every conversation has subtext , because we rarely say exactly what we mean. The best dialogue should include both what is said and what is not said.

I once had a roommate who cared a lot about the tidiness of our apartment, but would never say it outright. We soon figured out that whenever she said something like “I might bring some friends over tonight,” what she meant was “Please wash your dishes, because there are no clean plates left for my friends to use.”

When you’re writing dialogue, it’s important to think about what’s not being said. Even pleasant conversations can hide a lot beneath the surface.

Is one character secretly mad at the other?

Is one secretly in love with the other?

Is one thinking about tomorrow’s math test and only pretending to pay attention to what the other person is saying?

Personally, I find it really hard to use subtext when I write dialogue from scratch.

In my first drafts I let my characters say what they really mean. Then, when I’m editing, I go back and figure out how to convey the same information through subtext instead.

Tip #6: Show, Don’t Tell

When I was in high school, I once wrote a story in which the protagonist’s mother tells her: “As you know, Susan, your dad left us when you were five.”

I’ve learned a lot about the writing craft since high school, but it doesn’t take a brilliant writer to figure out that this is not something any mother would say to her daughter in real life.

The reason I wrote that line of dialogue was because I wanted to tell the reader when Susan last saw her father, but I didn’t do it in a realistic way.

Don’t shoehorn information into your characters’ conversations if they’re not likely to say it to each other.

One useful trick is to have your characters get into an argument.

You can convey a lot of information about a topic through their conflicting opinions, without making it sound like either of the characters is saying things for the reader’s benefit.

Here’s one way my high school self could have conveyed the same information in a more realistic way in just a few lines:

Susan: “Why didn’t you tell me Dad was leaving? Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?”

Mom: “You were only five. I wanted to protect you.”

Tip #7: Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Dialogue tends to flow out easily when you’re drafting your story, so in the editing process, you’ll need to be ruthless. Cut anything that doesn’t move the story forward.

Try not to write dialogue that feels like small talk.

You can eliminate most hellos and goodbyes, or summarize them instead of showing them. Readers don’t want to waste their time reading dialogue that they hear every day.

In addition, try not to write dialogue with too many trigger phrases, which are questions that trigger the next line of dialogue, such as:

• “And then what?”
• “What do you mean?”

It’s tempting to slip these in when you’re writing dialogue because they keep the conversation flowing. I still catch myself doing this from time to time.

Remember that you don’t need three lines of dialogue when one line could accomplish the same thing.

Let’s look at some dialogue examples from successful novels that follow each of our seven tips.

Dialogue Example #1: How to Create Character Voice

Let’s start with an example of a character with a distinct voice from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

“What happened, Harry? What happened? Is he ill? But you can cure him, can’t you?” Colin had run down from his seat and was now dancing alongside them as they left the field. Ron gave a huge heave and more slugs dribbled down his front. “Oooh,” said Colin, fascinated and raising his camera. “Can you hold him still, Harry?”

Most readers could figure out that this was Colin Creevey speaking, even if his name hadn’t been mentioned in the passage.

This is because Colin Creevey is the only character who speaks with such extreme enthusiasm, even at a time when Ron is belching slugs.

This snippet of written dialogue does a great job of showing us Colin’s personality and how much he worships his hero Harry.

Dialogue Example #2: How to Write Realistic Dialogue

Here’s an example of how to write dialogue that feels realistic from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

“As much as I love this land, some days I think about leaving it,” Babi said. “Where to?” “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget. Pakistan first, I suppose. For a year, maybe two. Wait for our paperwork to get processed.” “And then?” “And then, well, it is a big world. Maybe America. Somewhere near the sea. Like California.”

Notice the punctuation and grammar that these two characters use when they speak.

There are many sentence fragments in this conversation like, “Anyplace where it’s easy to forget.” and “Somewhere near the sea.”

Babi often omits the verbs from his sentences, just like people do in real life. He speaks in short fragments instead of long, flowing paragraphs.

This dialogue shows who Babi is and feels similar to the way a real person would talk, while still remaining concise.

Dialogue Example #3: How to Simplify Your Dialogue Tags

Here’s an example of effective dialogue tags in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

In this passage, the narrator’s been caught exploring the forbidden west wing of her new husband’s house, and she’s trying to make excuses for being there.

“I lost my way,” I said, “I was trying to find my room.” “You have come to the opposite side of the house,” she said; “this is the west wing.” “Yes, I know,” I said. “Did you go into any of the rooms?” she asked me. “No,” I said. “No, I just opened a door, I did not go in. Everything was dark, covered up in dust sheets. I’m sorry. I did not mean to disturb anything. I expect you like to keep all this shut up.” “If you wish to open up the rooms I will have it done,” she said; “you have only to tell me. The rooms are all furnished, and can be used.” “Oh, no,” I said. “No. I did not mean you to think that.”

In this passage, the only dialogue tags Du Maurier uses are “I said,” “she said,” and “she asked.”

Even so, you can feel the narrator’s dread and nervousness. Her emotions are conveyed through what she actually says, rather than through the dialogue tags.

This is a splendid example of evocative speech that doesn’t need fancy dialogue tags to make it come to life.

Dialogue Example #4: How to Balance Speech with Action

Let’s look at a passage from The Princess Bride by William Goldman, where dialogue is melded with physical action.

With a smile the hunchback pushed the knife harder against Buttercup’s throat. It was about to bring blood. “If you wish her dead, by all means keep moving," Vizzini said. The man in black froze. “Better,” Vizzini nodded. No sound now beneath the moonlight. “I understand completely what you are trying to do,” the Sicilian said finally, “and I want it quite clear that I resent your behavior. You are trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen, and I think it quite ungentlemanly.” “Let me explain,” the man in black began, starting to edge forward. “You’re killing her!” the Sicilian screamed, shoving harder with the knife. A drop of blood appeared now at Buttercup’s throat, red against white.

In this passage, William Goldman brings our attention seamlessly from the action to the dialogue and back again.

This makes the scene twice as interesting, because we’re paying attention not just to what Vizzini and the man in black are saying, but also to what they’re doing.

This is a great way to keep tension high and move the plot forward.

Dialogue Example #5: How to Write Conversations with Subtext

This example from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card shows how to write dialogue with subtext.

Here is the scene when Ender and his sister Valentine are reunited for the first time, after Ender’s spent most of his childhood away from home training to be a soldier.

Ender didn’t wave when she walked down the hill toward him, didn’t smile when she stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew it because of the way his eyes never left her face. “You’re bigger than I remembered,” she said stupidly. “You too,” he said. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.” “Memory does play tricks on us.” “No. Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore. Come on. Let’s go out into the lake.”

In this scene, we can tell that Valentine missed her brother terribly, and that Ender went through a lot of trauma at Battle School, without either of them saying it outright.

The conversation could have started with Valentine saying “I missed you,” but instead, she goes for a subtler opening: “You’re bigger than I remembered.”

Similarly, Ender could say “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” but instead he says, “I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore.”

We can deduce what each of these characters is thinking and feeling from what they say and from what they leave unsaid.

Dialogue Example #6: How to Show, Not Tell

Let’s look at an example from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. This scene is the story’s first introduction of the ancient creatures called the Chandrian.

“I didn’t know the Chandrian were demons,” the boy said. “I’d heard—” “They ain’t demons,” Jake said firmly. “They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu’s choice of the path, and he cursed them to wander the corners—” “Are you telling this story, Jacob Walker?” Cob said sharply. “Cause if you are, I’ll just let you get on with it.” The two men glared at each other for a long moment. Eventually Jake looked away, muttering something that could, conceivably, have been an apology. Cob turned back to the boy. “That’s the mystery of the Chandrian,” he explained. “Where do they come from? Where do they go after they’ve done their bloody deeds? Are they men who sold their souls? Demons? Spirits? No one knows.” Cob shot Jake a profoundly disdainful look. “Though every half-wit claims he knows...”

The three characters taking part in this conversation all know what the Chandrian are.

Imagine if Cob had said “As we all know, the Chandrian are mysterious demon-spirits.” We would feel like he was talking to us, not to the two other characters.

Instead, Rothfuss has all three characters try to explain their own understanding of what the Chandrian are, and then shoot each other’s explanations down.

When Cob reprimands Jake for interrupting him and then calls him a half-wit for claiming to know what he’s talking about, it feels like a realistic interaction.

This is a clever way for Rothfuss to introduce the Chandrian in a believable way.

Dialogue Example #7: How to Keep Your Dialogue Concise

Here’s an example of concise dialogue from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

“Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?” he said. “No, sir! I certainly don’t,” I said. I wished to hell he’d stop calling me “boy” all the time. He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It’s boring to do that every two minutes. “What would you have done in my place?” he said. “Tell the truth, boy.” Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would’ve done exactly the same thing if I’d been in his place, and how most people didn’t appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.

Here, the last paragraph diverges from the prior ones. After the teacher says “Tell the truth, boy,” the rest of the conversation is summarized, rather than shown.

The summary of what the narrator says in the last paragraph—“I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff”—serves to hammer home that this is the type of “old bull” that the narrator has fed to his teachers over and over before.

It doesn’t need to be shown because it’s not important to the narrator—it’s just “all that stuff.”

Salinger could have written out the entire conversation in dialogue, but instead he kept the dialogue concise.

Final Words

Now you know how to write clear, effective dialogue! Start with the basic rules for dialogue and try implementing the more advanced tips as you go.

What are your favorite dialogue tips? Let us know in the comments below.

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How to Format Dialogue: Complete Guide

Dialogue formatting matters. Whether you’re working on an essay, novel, or any other form of creative writing. Perfectly formatted dialogue makes your work more readable and engaging for the audience.

In this article, you’ll learn the dialogue formatting rules. Also, we’ll share examples of dialogue in essays for you to see the details.

What is a Dialogue Format?

Dialogue format is a writing form authors use to present characters' communication. It's common for play scripts, literature works, and other forms of storytelling.

A good format helps the audience understand who is speaking and what they say. It makes the communication clear and enjoyable. In dialogue writing, we follow the basic grammar rules like punctuation and capitalization. They help us illustrate the speaker’s ideas.

General Rules to Follow When Formatting a Dialogue

Dialogue writing is an essential skill for both professionals and scholars . It shows your ability to express the issues and ideas of other people in different setups. The core rules of formatting are about punctuation. So, below is a quick reminder on punctuation marks’ names:

And now, to practice.

Please follow these rules for proper dialogue formatting:

•  Use quotation marks. Enclose the speaker’s words in double quotations. It helps readers distinguish between a character’s speech and a narrator’s comments.
•  Place punctuation inside quotation marks. All punctuation like commas, exclamations, or interrogation marks, go inside the double quotations.
•  Keep dialogue tags behind quotation marks. A dialogue tag is (1) words framing direct speech to convey the context and emotions of a conversation. For example, in (“I can’t believe this is you,” she replied.), the dialogue tag is “she replied.”
•  Use an ellipsis or em-dashes for pauses or interruptions. To show interruptions or pauses, end phrases with ellipses inside quotations. Em-dashes go outside quotations. No other extra marks are necessary here.
•  Remember a character’s voice.  Ensure that each character’s phrases reflect their background and personality.

5 More Rules to Know (+ Examples of Dialogue)

For proper formatting of dialogue in writing, stick to the following rules:

1. Each speaker’s saying comes in a new paragraph

Begin a new paragraph whenever a new character starts speaking. It allows you to differentiate speakers and make their conversation look more organized. (2)

“Has Mr. de Winter been in?” I said.    “Yes, Madam,” said Robert; “he came in just after two, and had a quick lunch, and then went out again. He asked for you and Frith said he thought you must have gone down to see the ship.”    “Did he say when he would be back again?” I asked.    “No, Madam.” — from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

2. Separate dialogue tags with commas

When using dialogue tags ( e.g., “she said,” “he replied,”), separate them with commas. 

For example:

“You’ve got to do something right now , ” Aaron said , “Mom is really hurting. She says you have to drive her to the hospital.” “Actually, Dad , ” said Caleb, sidling in with his catalog , “There’s someplace you can drive me, too.” “No, Caleb.” — from The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

3. When quoting within dialogue, place single quotes

If a character cites somebody or something while speaking, we call it a reported dialogue. In this case, use single quotations within double ones you place for a direct speech. It will help readers see that it’s a quote.

John started to cry. “When you said, ‘I never wanted to meet you again in my life!’ It hurts my feelings.”

4. You can divide a character’s long speech into paragraphs

Dialogue writing is different when a person speaks for a longer time. It’s fine to divide it into shorter paragraphs. Ensure the proper quotation marks placing:

 The first quotation mark goes at the beginning of the dialogue. Each later paragraph also starts with it until that direct speech ends.

 The second quotation mark — the one “closing” the monologue — goes at the dialogue’s end.

Josphat took a deep breath and began. “ Here’s the things about lions. They’re dangerous creatures. They only know how to kill. Have you ever seen a lion in an open area? Probably not. Because if you had you’d be dead now. “ I saw a lion once. I was fetching firewood to cook lunch. All of a sudden I found myself face to face with a lion. My heart stopped. I knew it was my end on earth. If it wasn’t the poachers we wouldn’t be having this talk. ”

Yet, you can keep a long text as a whole by adding some context with dialogue tags. Like here:

As you can see, there’s no quotation mark at the end of the paragraph in red. It’s because the next “Ha! ha!” paragraph continues the character’s speech.

5. Use action beats

Describe actions to provide context and keep readers engaged. Help them “hear” your characters. Punctuation also helps here: exclamation (!) or interrogation with exclamations (?!) demonstrate the corresponding tone of your narrative.

He slammed the door and shouted , “I can’t believe you did that ! “

Mistakes to Avoid When Formatting Dialogue

A good dialogue is a powerful instrument for a writer to show the character’s nature to the audience. Below are the mistakes to avoid in formatting if you want to reach that goal.

 So, please don’t :

• Allow characters to speak for too long. Writing long paragraphs will bore the reader, making them skip through your speech. Short but sweet talk is the best. When writing, aim to be brief, dynamic, and purposeful. If your character speaks too much, generating opinion essays , ensure this speech makes sense and serves a bigger purpose.
• Overburden dialogue with exposition.  Avoid telling the story background or building sophisticated words in your characters’ speeches. Instead, reveal the narrative content in small bursts and blend it around the rest of the prose. Convey it through your character’s actions and thoughts rather than summaries and explanations.
• Create rhetorical flourishes. Make your characters sound natural. Let them speak the way they’d do if they were real people. Consider their age, profession, and cultural background — and choose lexical items that fit them most.
• Use repetitive dialogue tags. Constant “he asked” and “she said” sounds monotonous. Diversify your tags: use power verbs, synonyms, and dialogue beats.

Frequently Asked Questions by Students

How to format dialogue in an essay.

Formatting a dialogue in an essay is tricky for most students. Here’s how to do it: Enclose the speaker’s words with double quotations and start every other character’s line from a new paragraph. Stick to the citation styles like APA or MLA to ensure credibility. 

How to format dialogue in a novel?

 A dialogue in a novel follows all the standard rules for clarity and readability. Ensure to use attributions, quotation marks, and paragraph format. It makes your dialogue flow, grabbing the reader’s attention.

How to format dialogue in a book?

Dialogue formatting in a book is critical for storytelling. It helps the audience distinguish the hero’s words. Follow the general rules we’ve discussed above:

Use double quotations and isolate dialogue tags with commas. Remember to place the discussion in blocks for better readability.

How to format dialogue between two characters?

A two-character dialogue offers the best way to prove successful formatting skills. Ensure you use action beats, quotations, and attribution tags. It allows readers to follow the conversation and understand it better.

What is the purpose of dialogue in a narrative essay?  

Dialogue writing is the exchange of views between two or more people to reach a consensus. It reveals the character’s attitude and argumentation. Last but not least, it helps convey the descriptive nature of your narrative essay.

References:

• https://valenciacollege.edu/students/learning-support/winter-park/communications/documents/WritingDialogueCSSCTipSheet_Revised_.pdf
• https://www.ursinus.edu/live/files/1158-formatting-dialogue
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Writing A Narrative Essay

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Examples of Dialogue Tags

Examples of Dialogue Tags:

interrupted

Ebooks in Galileo

Additional Links & Resources

• Dialogue Cheat Sheet

Dialogue is an exchange of conversation between two or more people or characters in a story. As a literary style, dialogue helps to advance the plot, reveal a character's thoughts or emotions, or shows the character's reaction within the story. Dialogue gives life to the story and supports the story's atmosphere.

There are two types of dialogue that can be used in an narrative essay.

Direct dialogue  is written between inverted commas or quotes. These are the actual spoken words of a character 

Indirect dialogue  is basically telling someone about what another person said

Formatting Dialogue

Dialogue is an important part of a narrative essay, However formatting dialogue can be troublesome at times.

When formatting dialogue use these rules and examples to help with your formatting:

Place double quotation marks at the beginning an end of spoken words.  The quotations go on the  outside  of both the words and end-of-dialogue punctuation.

• Example:  "What is going on here?" John asked.

Each speaker gets a new paragraph that is indented.

      “hi,” said John as he stretched out his hand.

           "Good Morning, how are you?" said Brad shaking John’s hand.

                      "Good. Thanks for asking," John said.

Each speaker’s actions are in the same paragraph as their dialogue.

 A  dialogue tag  is anything that indicates which character spoke and describes how they spoke.

If the tag comes before the dialogue,  use a comma straight after the tag. If the dialogue is the beginning of a sentence, capitalize the first letter. End the dialogue with the appropriate punctuation (period, exclamation point, or question mark), but keep it INSIDE the quotation marks.

• Examples Before: 

James said, “I’ll never go shopping with you again!”

John said, “It's a great day to be at the beach.”

She opened the door and yelled, “Go away! Leave me alone!”

If the dialogue tag comes after the dialogue , Punctuation still goes INSIDE quotation marks. Unless the dialogue tag begins with a proper noun, it is  not  capitalized. End the dialogue tag with appropriate punctuation. Use comma after the quote unless it ends with a question mark or exclamation mark.

• Examples After: 

“Are you sure this is real life?” Lindsay asked.

“It’s so gloomy out,” he said.

“Are we done?” asked Brad . 

“This is not your concern!” Emma said.

If dialogue tag is in the middle of dialogue.  A comma should be used before the dialogue tag inside the closing quotation mark; Unless the dialogue tag begins with a proper noun, it is  not  capitalized. A comma is used after the dialogue tag, outside of quotation marks, to reintroduce the dialogue. End the dialogue with the appropriate punctuation followed by the closing quotation marks. 

When it is two sentences, the first sentence will end with a punctuation mark and the second begins with a capital letter.

• Examples middle: 

“Let’s run away,” she whispered, “we wont get another chance.”

“I thought you cared.” Sandy said, hoping for an explanation. “How could you walk away?”

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Jerry whispered. “I’ll miss him.”

Questions in dialogue.  

if there is a dialogue tag, the question mark will act as a comma and you will then lowercase the first word in the dialogue tag 

• Example: What are you doing?" he asked.

if there is simply an action after the question, the question mark acts as a period and you will then capitalize the first word in the next sentence.

“Sarah, why didn't you text me back?” Jane asked.

“James, why didn’t you show up?” Carol stomped her feet in anger before slamming the door behind her.

If the question or exclamation ends the dialogue, do not use commas to separate the dialogue from dialogue tags.

• Example:  “Sarah, why didn't you text me back?” Jane asked.

If the sentence containing the dialogue is a question, then the        question mark goes outside of the quotation marks.

Did the teacher say, “The Homework is due Tomorrow”?

If you have to quote something within the dialogue.  When a character quotes someone else, use double-quotes around what your character says, then single-quotes around the speech they’re quoting.

• Example: 

"When doling out dessert, my grandmother always said, 'You may have a cookie for each hand.'"

Dashes & Ellipses:

Dashes ( — ) are used to indicate abruptly interrupted dialogue or when one character's dialogue is interrupted by another character.

Use an em dash  inside  the quotation marks to cut off the character mid-dialogue, usually with either (A) another character speaking or (B) an external action.

• Including the em dash at the end of the line of dialogue signifies that your character wasn't finished speaking.
• If the speaking character's action interrupts their own dialogue . 
• Use em dashes  outside  the quotation marks to set off a bit of action without a speech verb. 

Examples: 

• Heather ran towards Sarah with excitement. “You won’t believe what I found out—”
• "Is everything—" she started to ask, but a sharp look cut her off.
• "Look over there—" She snapped her mouth shut so she didn't give the secret away.
• "Look over there"—she pointed towards the shadow—"by the stairway."

Use ellipses (...) when a character has lost their train of thought or can't figure out what to say

• Example:  “You haven’t…” he trailed off in disbelief.

Action Beats

Action beats show what a character is doing before, during, or after their dialogue.

“This isn't right.” She squinted down at her burger. “Does this look like it is well done to you?”

She smiled. “I loved the center piece you chose.”

If you separate two complete sentences, you will simply place the action beat as its own sentence between two sets of quotes.

“I never said he could go to the concert.” Linda sighed and sat in her chair. “He lied to you again.”

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How to Write Dialogue in an Essay: Perfect Writing Guide

Writing essays is a part of every student’s life. The tool that can be useful for all composition genres with no limitations is dialogue. Typically, article writing at school and college is related to informative or argumentative intentions.

Dialogues can be included in reflective or narrative texts and creative assignments, such as screenplays. Likewise, if your paper is more on the argumentative side, you may include a dialogue when transcribing an extract from an interview to reinforce your thesis.

To get the highest mark for your paper, it is crucial to know how to write a dialogue in an essay. Keep reading this article to find out how to add it to your paper, whether for academic, informative, or creative purposes.

Usage of Dialogues in Essays

Over our educational years at school and university, we are taught to compose argumentative, narrative, informative, creative, and expository essays. Writing becomes a skill we need to develop to be successful when composing a report.

Quote, text line, or dialogue represents two or more characters talking, and can turn a dull paper into an easy-going and fun learning experience.

And just like when watching a movie, dialogues will have us more engaged in discovering the ending of the tale. Moreover, you will have a strong thesis for persuasive essay texts by including dialogues in them. How is this accomplished?

Dialogue serves more than just fiction, as we stated earlier. They transform information into a fluid and rhythmic piece of writing, providing data on an actual scenario portrayed as a conversation. This results in a direct and captivating piece that will teach and entertain the reader. That sounds like a win-win situation, right?

How to Format Dialogue in an Essay?

Here you will encounter some of the essential rules in terms of punctuation and formatting that should be followed when writing effective dialogue in your article so that it is read naturally. If you are unsure of your profile essay writing skills, keep reading this page to get accurate and precise information for composing your best paper.

• How to add dialogue in an essay: you can either use double quotation marks to indicate what someone said, or start in a new line using a Dash followed by the actually spoken phrase every time a new character speaks. This demonstrates that dialogue conversations have started.

“Elisa gave me this purse for my birthday.”

—Elisa gave me this purse for my birthday.

—It looks good on you.

—Thank you, I like it a lot.

• If you are quoting already, use single quotation marks to add another quotation within. This is useful when you depict someone describing a certain circumstance that happened to them.

“He was eating lunch next to me when Tom came by and yelled, ‘let’s go outside,’ so we went.”

• Make sure to use closing quotation marks when the character finishes talking. If dashes are used instead, end that person’s speech with a complete stop, showing that a dialogue has ended.

“I took my cat to the Vet last night to get a shot. He is alright now.”

• When a character is quoted, exclamation and question marks should be placed inside the quotation marks. If the exclamation or quotation marks refer to the greater sentence, not the quotation itself, place them outside the quotation marks.

My niece screamed, “let’s play hide and seek!”. What was your reaction when your niece screamed, “let’s play hide and seek”?.

• Do not add a period if the character pauses in the speech; in this case, write the speech, then use a comma to include a remark and add another comma before the last part of said speech.

“I couldn’t finish the presentation tonight,” he said with a tired voice, “I will tomorrow.”

• If a quote is too long, for example, longer than a paragraph in the essay, you can break it into two sections to make it easier to read. Such a situation is frequent when you write a narrative text. This type of assignment is often given to college and high school students. And it’s one of the most difficult tasks. If you need more confidence in your composition writing skills but still want to get a great mark and impress your teacher, we recommend you to buy narrative essays from professional writers. They will definitely know how to deal with complicated quotes. Here you can see an example of how a big direct quote was shortened to create a new paragraph for the text:

“Christmastime at work is very intense, and we work long shifts. Last year, we launched fifteen new products so that they were sold out during Christmastime. Luckily, it was a success. Our most popular items were: a Christmas cookie-scented candle, a new edition of the traditional elf-pet costume, and a unique knife that cuts the turkey easily and evenly.

I tried the candle immediately and loved the scent; my sister dressed her dog and three cats as elves, poor things, but she looked amused, and my mom tried the turkey knife; she genuinely said it was the best she could use to cut the turkey.”

How to Write Dialogue in an Essay?

Knowing how to put dialogue in your essay will allow you to bring out your creative side while mastering the skill of showing rather than telling. If you want to know particular features of  writing a good process essay , read to master how to write a dialogue and search for relevant sentences. Also, you’ll need to craft coherent paragraphs, use speech tags and be aware of the format and punctuation rules when writing dialogue in your paper.

Common Dialogue Mistakes to Avoid

Mistakes are easy to make when we need to learn the rules of correct essay writing, so pay attention to the most common mistakes to avoid delivering an enjoyable and compelling text.

One of the most frequent mistakes students make when they need to learn how to put dialogue in an essay is confusing dialogue with citations. The latter is adequate when directly referencing, word-by-word, other authors to support statements previously made regarding a particular topic. At the same time, dialogues are supposed to deliver information by being creative and motivating the reader to relate to a life situation described in the dialogue.

Citation: also known as direct quotes, is information written by an author and referenced to support a claim.

Dialogue: a speech between two or more characters, often portrayed to captivate the reader, and what is used is only a part of a greater conversation.

Other mistakes to avoid in your text:

• Providing too many details and unnecessary talk can be counterproductive. Keep it simple.
• Repeating information from one word to another. Describe it in your own words or show it through dialogue formatting. This will make the topic more interesting as the teacher will use their imagination. If you need help with how to do it properly, we recommend asking for help from a specialized platform, such as Edusson.com . Here you will find professional writers who will write your article quickly, plagiarism-free papers with high quality, and at a reasonable price.
• Using more dialogue tags than required can distort the readability of the conversation.
• Mentioning the characters’ names often, which only happens in real talk, decreases credibility.
• Incorrect use of opening quotation marks.

Some types of articles would benefit from dialogues to bring more dynamics into them. Check to avoid the mistakes we presented to you, compose creatively, and most importantly, just as dialogue tells a story. It describes a scenery that will make the reader learn through real-life association, so use dialogue when you think it will add value to the text.

Example of Dialogue in an Essay

Here we will give you examples of how to add dialogue to an essay:

Do thorough research on the topic by looking up reliable sources Use an online plagiarism checker to ensure that your paper is unique Explain the purpose of your study, providing supporting arguments, examples, and close by validating the thesis mentioned at the beginning. If the topic you are writing about is rather technical, define the meaning of its relevant vocabulary Teach the reader, do not assume they know everything. Otherwise, they wouldn’t come to read Verify that your composition is cohesive and informative Finally, read both your text and dialogue out loud to check they are coherent and eloquent.

Knowing these dialogue rules, you are ready to write with confidence! Whether you are writing for college, creating a dialogue for fun, or just eager to learn about this topic, you already know the essentials of how to write a dialogue in your essay with the correct format and punctuation rules. Additionally, if you are ever in need of professional help for your writing, you can always opt to pay to write an essay to ensure that you are submitting a well-written, high-quality paper.

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How to Write an Essay in Conversation Style

How to Determine the Tone of an Essay

Conversational essays are intended to engage the reader and draw them in more than a more formal essay would. The stylistic choices that writers use ultimately determine the level of formality of an essay. Narrative essays tend to be more conversational in style because they generally include personal anecdotes and are usually written in first person point of view, naturally giving them a more conversational tone.

Word Choice

An author’s choice of words greatly affects an essay’s style. It helps to use simple words when creating a conversational style, as if you are speaking directly to the reader. Colloquial phrases almost never appear in a formal essay, but they can be used to great effect to create a conversational tone in a narrative essay. For example, if you are writing about what makes a great teacher and you wanted to say that long lectures are boring, in a conversational essay you can start out using a colloquialism. For example, "Classes where the teacher drones on forever aren't much fun, and students lose interest quickly." In a formal essay, a similar sentiment might read, "Teachers who only lecture aren't as effective as teachers who provide engaging activities for the students."

Point of View

Using a first person point of view is another way to create a conversational tone in an essay, especially narrative essays, because it gives the tone of the essay a more relaxed and conversational feel. For example, a first person account of your favorite teacher will give an essay a more conversational feel than if you are writing a more distanced third person account of teachers in general. A conversational essay feels more immediate and personal, and a first person point of view helps provide that sense of immediacy. Readers will feel that you are speaking directly to them instead of to the audience at large.

Rhetorical Questions

Asking readers rhetorical questions often engages them by creating a “dialogue” in the minds of the readers. As they read and mentally respond to the questions you pose, they become part of a conversation with you, the author of the essay. This mental engagement helps create a more conversational style.

Inserting humor into an essay also lightens the formality of the rigid essay structure. Whether it’s a humorous introduction or a sprinkling of witty but relevant remarks throughout the essay, using humor creates a more conversational tone in an essay. Humor shortens the emotional distance between people and encourages dialogue. This makes an essay more conversational because readers feel like they are a part of the writing and not just spectators. But, be careful not to overdo the humor as too much or too overt humor can take your essay from conversational to frivolous and silly.

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• Writers Digest: Crafting a First-Person Essay
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Stacy Alleyne is a certified English teacher with a BA in English and graduate work in English, education, journalism and law. She has written numerous articles and her own dining column for the "Gazette."

How To Format Dialogue (includes examples)

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How to Achieve a Conversational Tone in Your Writing

• By Lavender Nguyen
• October 28, 2020

Table of Contents

Boosting engagement with your content can be as simple as writing the way you talk. .

A well-quoted stat in marketing circles states that 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but that only 2 out of 10 will actually go on to read beyond the headline. The deciding factor may very well be the tone of your copy: how you sound, who you seem to be.

Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics ran an A/B test on two versions of the same blog post — one written in a formal tone, and the other written conversationally. 

Here’s what he found:

• 247% more readers consumed the full article when written in a conversational tone
• Readers spent an average of 4:45 minutes reading the conversational version, and only 1:22 minutes on the formal tone version

The conversational tone post came out the clear winner. 

In this post, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to achieve a conversational tone in your writing. We’ll cover:

What is a conversational writing style?

• The difference between conversational writing and formal writing
• When you should use conversational writing
• 11 tips for practicing conversational writing
• Real examples of conversational copy 

Ready? Let’s dig in. 

Conversational writing feels like a one-on-one conversation between your audience and you. 

It’s real, meaningful, and relevant. It should create a kind of intimacy—ideally by using language and phrasing familiar to the audience. And it avoids stodgy words and sentence construction at all costs!

Let’s look at an example.

Little Black Kat Creative is a graphic design firm that produces unique, custom designs. Her website invites the audience to have some fun with her, and uses an easy-to-read conversational tone that reflects the way one would talk to a friend. She uses calls to action like “Become my BFF” and “Say Hello”. She even makes her terms and conditions sound interesting by calling them “the boring but important stuff”. 

On Instagram , Kat, the woman behind Little Black Kat Creative, shares her personal story to build even more intimacy with her followers. 

And it totally works. 

Conversational writing helps you to:

• Convey your message more easily. You use simple words, not fancy ones or jargon. 
• Engage better with customers. You show you’re genuine and human. You write like you talk. 
• Build a strong brand. The more customers want to engage with you, the stronger the relationship between them and you. 
• Increase conversions. Relationships build trust. Once trust is established, it can skyrocket your sales . 

The difference between conversational tone writing and formal writing

Some simple rules help to distinguish conversational writing from formal writing. Here are a few:

Formal writing uses longer sentences and words, complex sentence structures and language that would make your university professors proud. If you’re writing an academic paper, it’ll help you to sound smart and studious. 

But out in the rest of the world, formal writing often imposes a cognitive burden on your  readers. Conversational writing, on the other hand, allows you to sound, well, human. And humans tend to prefer doing business with other humans. 

When you should you use conversational tone in writing

The tone you adopt in your writing depends on many factors: the kind of business you’re in, your target audience, your messaging goals…

But unless you’re writing academic papers or working in law, you can likely safely use a conversational tone in almost all of the content you produce: from blog and social media posts, to email copy, web copy, landing pages, etc. 

Because ultimately, with any communication piece, your goal is to convey your message clearly, memorably and in an engaging way. You want your audience to pay attention. 

By consistently using conversational writing style, you make your brand accessible and memorable. Seth Godin has been doing this for years and has built a brand that is memorable not only for its thought-provoking work, but also for its ability to engage a wide cross-section of audiences.

11 tips for practicing conversational tone writing 

Unlearning the impetus to write formally takes some work. Follow these 11 tips to create an easy, conversational tone in your writing. 

1. Choose simple words

Avoid using all the words you would never use in real life, like “utlize” instead of use. No one says “utilize”. Remember that you’re writing to connect, not to impress. 

Also, avoid industry jargon as much as you can. Write so that anyone can understand what you’re talking about. 

The United States government created an amazing list of plain language words and phrases to use in your writing. 

Bookmark this list and check it whenever you write.

2. Use the second-person voice

Using the second-person “you” means you put your readers at the centre of the conversation. You talk less about yourself and more about them. 

Kathy Sierra , co-creator of the bestselling Head First series, explained this best:

“So one of the theories on why speaking directly to the user is more effective than a more formal lecture tone is that the user’s brain thinks it’s in a conversation, and therefore has to pay more attention to hold up its end! Sure, your brain intellectually knows it isn’t having a face-to-face conversation, but at some level, your brain wakes up when its being talked with as opposed to talked at. The word “you” can sometimes make all the difference.” 

3. Write short sentences

Keep your sentences short. Break long sentences into many short ones. 

Because long sentences reduce readability. 

A long sentence can make readers’ minds wander off mid-sentence . It takes more focus and time to process the information when a new piece of information is already vying for your attention. By shortening your sentence, you make your point easier to read and understand. 

Look at Hiut Denim ’s website for a great example of short sentences. The brand applies a conversational tone by using short sentences, simple words, and clear writing:

4. Use contractions

Do you say, “I will go to work,” or “I’ll go to work.”

In conversation, we use contractions. In conversational writing we do it too.

5. Avoid passive voice

In an active voice construction, the subject of the sentence carries the action of the verb. But in the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is being acted upon by the action. It not only makes the sentence longer, but it’s also harder to understand. 

Look at these examples:

Active voice: You can return your order.

Passive voice: Your order can be returned. 

Which one gives customers more confidence? 

The answer is obvious: The active voice.

6. Ask questions

A question makes your audience stop to think about their answers. It changes the flow of your writing. It keeps your audience involved in the conversation. 

Case in point: instead of saying, “Check out our blog to learn useful self-care tips and tricks,” The Body Shop asks you questions. They write a description as if they’re talking to you like a friend. 

7. Break grammar rules

Conversational writing style gives you the freedom to break the rules. That’s useful when you want your copy to come across as friendly and approachable. 

Here are some grammar rules you can break:

• Never start a sentence with and or but . Starting a sentence with “and” or “but” can make your point stronger. And how can you argue with that?
• Never use contractions . Contractions make a piece less formal and more approachable, don’tcha know. 
• Never end a sentence with a preposition . Winston Churchill found this silly , and you probably do, too. It’s certainly something to think on. 
• Never start a sentence with a conjunction . A sentence may flow better conversationally when started with a conjunction. Like in this example from Bombas , an apparel maker. 

Bombas uses short sentences (e.g., “Refund it. Send you socks.”) and also breaks grammar rules (“Happiness. Guaranteed.”) in its Happiness Guaranteed policy. 

8. Tell a story

A good story can change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours . It can appeal to personal emotions and create empathy. Our brains simply love stories. 

Cuddle + kind applies this tactic to their Instagram posts, like in this example:

Instead of telling what the fawn is made of, the brand humanizes it by giving it a human character and telling the story of “Elliott.”

When you start your writing with a story, you activate an emotional trigger. 

9. Show your personality 

Let your character — or brand character — shine through.

• Tell your audience why you’re on your mission to change the world
• Share your journey of how you became who you are
• Share behind-the-scenes details about your company
• Share the mistakes you’ve made
• Create your own style of using metaphors and images

When you reveal a little bit of yourself through your content, your audience will become more curious and attracted to it. They’ll want to know more about you. 

And that’s where a long relationship begins. 

10. Write as though you’re talking to a friend

It’s a good idea to imagine you’re writing to a friend. Make your audience feel like they’re in your fold. Here’s an example from Barkbox of a fun approach and super casual tone on its website. It’s created an approachable and honest brand voice that pet lovers can relate to.

11. Read it out loud 

Read your copy aloud and ask yourself if it sounds like writing? If you can write the way you talk, it’ll naturally come across as conversational.

Or, try explaining what you’ve written to a friend. Then, replace your draft with what you just said to them. 

“If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you’ll be ahead of 95% of writers. And it’s so easy to do: just don’t let a sentence through unless it’s the way you’d say it to a friend.” —Paul Graham, Co-founder, Y Combinator

Using a conversational tone in writing is a great way to engage your audience. So give it a try. Break some rules and give your readers a good reason to keep reading. Take the time to edit your copy to make it more conversational. And hopefully it will eventually lead to more actual conversations with your customers.

Want better messaging? Start with better personas.  Download our 20 best questions to create your best customer persona. 

Looking for guidance on how best to engage your audience? Get in touch , we’re here to support with content strategy, implementation and blueprints for good storytelling.

Lavender Nguyen

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Conversational Analysis: Exploring Social Interactions

Introduction

Conversation analysis: an overview, what are the basic principles of conversational analysis, conversation analysis example, how is conversation analysis carried out, challenges of conversation analysis.

From pauses to thinking words, from changes in volume to emphasis on words, conversation analysis looks at all the different ways meaning is embedded and understood in social interaction. In linguistics, conversation analysis plays a role in discourse analysis by focusing less on what people say and more on how they say it.

That said, there are numerous challenges and complexities relating to how people speak, how speech is understood, and how conversation shapes meaning, social relationships, and cultures. Collecting data to document and analyze the complexity of spoken interactions, as a result, is an equally daunting task, requiring a deep consideration of this analytical approach in detail.

In this article, we will look at conversation analysis, techniques used to conduct conversation analysis effectively, and challenges that researchers face when analyzing social interaction.

Conversation analysis examines concepts of speech acts that are non-verbal in nature such as speaking speed, intonation, word stress, and length of pauses. In contrast, discourse analysis focuses on understanding human communication through analyzing words, their meaning, the intentions behind them, and the underlying assumptions that inform them. Conversation analysis instead focuses on the non-verbal cues in social interactions.

What is the function of conversational analysis?

Conversation analysis theory acknowledges the importance of non-verbal cues present in interaction. Without these cues, interaction looks and sounds very different and perhaps unnatural.

For example, when someone answers a question, how confident are they in their answer? We can infer their level of confidence in the way they speak. Maybe they pause in between words because they are mentally searching for the right words. Perhaps they emphasize certain words in their answer because they are speaking from a place of authority and expertise.

The goal of conversation analysis is to document the ways that speakers interact with each other. The challenge is that the written form used in research papers and presentations does not lend itself to showing non-verbal information embedded in communication. We as research writers use prose and bulleted lists and rely on words to convey meaning.

As a result, it's incumbent on researchers employing conversation analysis to present their research with a strong conversation analysis essay or presentation that visualizes interaction. Searches for communication studies often produce research that provides various conversation analysis examples that make use of notations to mark the various non-verbal cues accompanying interaction.

Details captured in conversation analysis

Undertaking conversation analysis means analyzing the various features and developments of interaction and presenting them in an empirical manner that leads to theoretical development. While many other research inquiries that look at data from interviews and focus group discussions primarily examine the meaning of words and the co-construction of knowledge, conversation analysis acknowledges the importance of the accompanying features of interaction in influencing that meaning.

Some details captured in conversation analysis include, but are not limited to, the following:

• turn-taking
• interruptions
• thinking words
• word stress
• body language

Think about how each of these details, in isolation or in conjunction with each other, can make an interaction look and sound fundamentally different than an interaction without these details. Their contribution to the nuances of interaction justify the utility of conversation analysis among researchers in linguistics.

Distinguishing conversation analysis from discourse analysis

You can think of conversation analysis and discourse analysis either as complementary approaches or as one being a subset of the other. Either way, they have distinct approaches and objectives that are worth exploring in discrete detail.

Discourse analysis investigates the use of language in all aspects, from the meaning that is conveyed to the way that it is conveyed and why. Understanding discourse means acknowledging the larger context around language and communication and how that context informs meaning, cultures, and social relations.

Another approach is critical discourse analysis, which examines the use of language as an exercise of power. How politicians, business executives, and other people in power communicate messages is an important area of study that captures how ideas are shaped to reaffirm the power of institutions.

On the surface, it may not seem that there is significant overlap between conversation analysis and these other analytical approaches. However, the main thing in common between conversation analysis and discourse analysis is the assumption that the meaning of words is complemented by a whole host of other contextual cues, cultural assumptions, and situational considerations.

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Conversation analysis is more of a broad analytical approach rather than a strict methodology that warrants definition. However, there are a number of guiding principles that researchers should acknowledge when conducting conversation analysis:

• Empirical focus . There is an understanding among conversation analysis researchers that, given the dynamics of naturally occurring spoken interactions, spoken discourse can be captured and analyzed in a systematic manner. An empirical focus to conversation analysis can capture data and structure it in a way that allows researchers to identify recurring patterns from the interactional data.
• Context sensitivity . At the same time, researchers also acknowledge that the universal rules for interaction are all but elusive as interactions are informed by cultures, contexts, and individual differences. How speakers interact with each other in one culture is bound to differ from speakers in other cultures, so it is incumbent on researchers to place interactions in their situated contexts to provide sufficient definition to the theoretical developments they propose.
• Order in interaction . More often that not, people in interaction respond to each other in a process called turn-taking. This is easy to observe in a conversation involving two people, but how does this play out in a situation involving three or more speakers? As a result, researchers also employ conversation analysis to understand power dynamics between speakers, particularly those of different statuses or positions, or those with particular relationships.
• Indexicality . Research employing conversation analysis often examines the semiotic systems - or the ways in which people communicate and understand meaning - that guide interaction. A major component of semiotics is indexicality, or the concept where meaning is tied to "signs" in interaction such as gestures, pronouns, and accents. Capturing this indexicality thus requires situating interactions in sufficient context at the individual and macro levels.
• Data-driven analysis . Conversation analysis is primarily an inductive approach to understanding interactional data. While some research inquiries in conversation analysis may involve hypothesis testing or experimental study that can be deductive in nature, theoretical developments in conversation analysis typically arise from the data itself. This is an important feature of this analytical approach, especially when inductively analyzing culture and language.

The concept of Phonetics of Talk in Interaction provides a useful example where conversation analysis can prove relevant. Think about how mothers talk to their babies, and how this talk might be different among adults, or even between adults and children who are able to speak.

At least in Western contexts, mothers tend to repeat the nonsensical utterances their babies might make. They may also exaggerate their pronunciation of words or speak more slowly. Why they do this is fundamental to understanding parenting, making the empirical collection of data that represents these phenomena important to research about parenting and communication.

Other conversation analysis examples can look at how intonation and prosody inform communication. Consider the question "What did you do last night?" A speaker can emphasize any word in that question and the nuance might change accordingly. If they emphasize "what" or "night," the assumptions we can make about the speaker regarding what they are interested in and what they assume about who they are talking to are bound to change.

Conversation analysis can also look at how communication features like turn-taking, prosody, non-verbal gestures, and facial expressions might change across forms of interaction. Indeed, the way that people take turns in an online meeting can look fundamentally different from the turn-taking in face-to-face communication, prompting researchers to explore how online communication shapes interaction in different ways.

Conversation analysis typically has an established process that, in many ways, mirrors the process for other forms of qualitative research . That said, researchers should keep some additional considerations in mind while conducting conversation analysis.

• Data collection . Observations , interviews , and focus group discussions typically involve data collection by the use of an audio recorder. In addition, you may want to keep track of non-verbal utterances and other developments of note by using a video recorder or taking notes during data collection . Your data collection may also focus on different specific types of interaction, such as speeches, discussions, and dialogues.
• Conversation analysis transcription . Transcription is the process of turning raw audio or video into written text representing the words uttered in an interaction. When employing conversation analysis, you will likely want to consider transcribing as much detail as possible to capture spoken interaction subtleties. Thinking words, repetitions, errors in grammar and sentence structure, and other features of interaction that may not be linguistically accurate should all be included for the purpose of analysis. You may also include notations to indicate where relevant non-verbal cues occurred.
• Reflections on data collection . Reflections and realizations may come to you during the course of data collection which can inform your analysis. Conversation analysis notes and memos can be a useful component of the research process as they can point to important features of communication that warrant analysis or potentially novel theoretical developments regarding interaction.
• Notation of transcripts . A conversation analysis looks to examine spoken interactions closely by presenting utterances in extensive detail. However, when research papers and presentations rely on the written form to convey their findings, it's important to have a system in place for transcribing and marking up interaction data. The Jeffersonian transcription system is a form of notation commonly used in conversation analysis research to mark up details like turn-taking, pauses, and prosody. Other systems such as systemic functional linguistics transcription and phonetic transcription also exist, so you can choose the most appropriate approach for the research question you are exploring.

Developing expertise in conversation analysis requires an approach to qualitative data that differs from other methods such as thematic analysis and content analysis . A good deal of data organization is necessary to provide the structure that allows for an analysis of interactions that captures conversation analysis concepts in a rigorous fashion.

There are a number of methodological and logistical concerns to keep in mind when conducting conversation analysis.

• Equipment for data collection . The tasks of collecting conversational data can prove challenging when they rely on capturing as much granular detail as possible to facilitate writing realistic dialogue in research papers and presentations. A standard audio recorder might accomplish most tasks in conversation analysis, but if your research question relies on specific details in interaction such as intonation and word stress, more sensitive audio or video recording equipment might be necessary.
• Transcription . Transcribing natural spoken interactions remains an inherently subjective process despite the growing body of studies that employ conversation analysis. The manner in which you transcribe utterances should aim to be consistent and comprehensive in capturing as much detail as possible. Some people use more thinking words and sounds than others, while others may repeat words or stutter while speaking.
• Notation . Marking up research transcripts in a consistent and rigorous manner is yet another subjective component of conversation analysis. How do you measure pauses between words? What constitutes a sufficient rise or fall in intonation to warrant notation? Which syllables in a word does the speaker emphasize? Simply using a standard, established notation is not enough; it's far more important to apply it consistently in a way that your research audience can understand.
• Research and writing process . When employing conversation analysis, essay writing becomes a formidable task when it comes to persuading the research audience. A comprehensive conversation analysis essay requires an empirical approach to presenting findings in a manner that is easy for your research audience to understand. If you are presenting examples of your conversation analysis in written form, consider using a common notation that adheres to consistent standards. In addition, be sure to explain your data and analysis thoroughly enough to immerse your audience in the context of your data and the theoretical developments it illustrates.

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How to Properly to Cite Dialogue in MLA

Last Updated: February 13, 2024 References

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 73,521 times.

When you're writing a paper about a work of literature, such as a play or story, you might need to quote from the dialogue. If you're using the citation style of the Modern Language Association (MLA), your Works Cited entry will be the same as it would be for any book, play, or other source. However, the format and in-text citation of dialogue can be a little tricky, especially when you're quoting several lines of dialogue directly.

In-Text Citation

Use this method if your quote is short (3 lines or fewer) and only includes speech from one character. [1] X Research source

• For example, you might write: Nick, the narrator of the story, clearly has class insecurity: "'You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,' I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. 'Can't you talk about crops or something?'" (Fitzgerald 15)

• For example, you might write: Tom brings his racism full center when he exclaims that "civilization's going to pieces." (Fitzgerald 15)
• For example, you might write: Tom describes a book he's been reading and asserts "The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved" (Fitzgerald 16).

Block Quotes

Use this method for quotes that are longer than 3 lines or include speech from more than one character.

• For example, you might write: "You don't have to read far into Fitzgerald's book to encounter outright racism:" and then follow with a block quote about Tom discussing his white supremacist thoughts.

• With dialogue from a novel or short story, retain the paragraph format that appears in the original source and use double quotation marks around the spoken dialogue.
• If you're quoting dialogue from a play, the margins are different. The entire quote is set off 1 in (2.5 cm) from the text of your paper. Each subsequent line beyond a character's first is indented an additional 0.25 in (0.64 cm) (about 3 spaces). [7] X Research source

• Don't use quotation marks anywhere in the dialogue when block-quoting dialogue from a play.
• For example, you might quote the dialogue before Romeo and Juliet's first kiss: ROMEO. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? JULIET. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. ROMEO. O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. JULIET. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. ROMEO. Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. (Shakespeare 1.5.112-117)

• For example, the last lines of your block quote might look like this: And I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (Fitzgerald 19-20)

Works Cited

Use this method to organize information about the source in your Works Cited entry.

• Example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
• If there are 2 authors, list them in the order they appear on the title page of the book. Place a comma after the first author's first name, then type the word "and," followed by the second author's first and last name. (Example: Smith, John and Sally Ride)
• If there are 3 or more authors, list only the first author's name, add a comma after their first name, then type the abbreviation "et al." (Example: Smith, John, et al.)

• Book example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby .
• Short story example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz."

• Short story example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald , edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli,
• For literary journals or other periodicals , include the volume and issue numbers as well.

• Book example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby . Scribner, 2004.
• Short story example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald , edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scribner, 1995.

• Book example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby . Scribner, 2004. gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041h.html.
• Short story example: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz." The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald , edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scribner, 1995. public-library.uk/ebooks/28/56.pdf.

Template to Cite Dialogue in MLA

Expert Q&A

• If you're quoting Shakespeare , use the act, verse, and line numbers, rather than the page numbers of the specific edition you're using. With other plays, use the page number, as you would with any book. [15] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• This article describes how to cite dialogue using MLA 8th edition (2016). If your instructor or supervisor has you using a different edition, the format might be different. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://www.monmouth.edu/resources-for-writers/documents/mla-citing-drama.pdf/
• ↑ https://style.mla.org/citing-dialogue-from-a-novel/
• ↑ https://libguides.msjc.edu/c.php?g=498977&p=3416596
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_books.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_page_basic_format.html
• ↑ https://style.mla.org/works-cited-a-quick-guide/
• ↑ https://dcc.libguides.com/c.php?g=904157&p=6508010
• ↑ http://msweinfurter.weebly.com/uploads/5/4/3/7/5437316/mla_in_text_citation_of_poetry_and_drama_godot_and_auden.pdf

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How to Write Dialogue in an Essay

Knowing how to insert source materials into an essay is a central theme of academic writing. Sources can be cited to support your argument, expand it or even to be used to dissect a counter-argument and examine its validity.

This skill is so essential the rules of using quotation marks of when quoting texts are pounded into the student’s head. So much so you know when to quote a textual source and the reason to do so.

One of the areas many students struggle with is when or how they should use dialogue in an essay. A high number of essay writers don’t even know the difference between dialogue and quotes, let alone the correct punctuation surrounding it. The main reason it happens is because a large number of academic subjects focus solely on claim-based essays where dialogue is not used. This article will look at why dialogue can be so effective within a narrative essay and why. The topics discussed will be:

What is dialogue?

When do you use dialogue?

Why use dialogue?

How to write dialogue?

And Where you can find more information on this subject.

Dialogue: A definition

Dialogue is defined as a literary technique that writers use to depict a conversation between two or more people. Dialogue is a device that is employed in all kinds of fiction – movie, plays, books and can even be used in essays. It's important not to confuse dialogue with quotations from an outside source. Dialogue is largely made up to create a more visual, dramatic effect. Whereas direct quotes can be verified through citations.

Quotation marks are used with quoting from source as well as to mark dialogue in an essay but the conventions around the two change. As such, it is important to know the difference between the two.

Here is a small table that documents the main differences.

One of the biggest mistakes an essay writer makes is when they use dialogue as a direct quote. This mistake occurs as we are trained to use speech as direct quotes in claim-based essays. As we are trained to do this in the majority of our subjects, we don't know that we can use crafted narration and create dialogue in narrative essays to give them more weight. Due to this, we do not understand the conventions around its use or why to use it.

Dialogue: When to Use it.

Dialogue is a big part of the movies, television, novels, and plays. It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to essay writing, a dialogue only really appears in one type of essay – the narrative essay.

A narrative essay differs from most kinds of essay writing. Other types of essays often aim to make a claim about something. If we look at an argumentative essay , for example, it makes a claim that one point of view is right. And an expository essay will make claims about how a model or idea works. A narrative essay doesn't make claims like this. It is an essay that is used to relate stories and experience to the reader, and as such, it is much more story like in nature. These experiences include conversations the writer has had with other people.

Presenting conversations you had with friends as dialogue in an argumentative essay or expository piece wouldn’t do much to strengthen your argument and would undermine your creditability. It is better to use direct quotes from the source – even if it is spoken material. Direct quotes will be seen as the conventional norm as these types of essay expect the writer to be objective and scientific in their discussion.

Dialogue: Why do you use dialogue

Narrative essays use dialogue as a device – much like written fiction. They add depth, tension and character development to nonfiction writing. It also helps move the story along. As it is reported speech, you would be unlikely to remember all the details; so, you will have to recreate them from memory – remember to use the words, tones, and emotions that report it in the correct flavor. Readers will trust realistic dialogue that captures the situation.

Dialogue: How to format

This section will demonstrate the correct formatting conventions to use when inserting your dialogue into a narrative essay. This section will look at the correct usage of the quotation marks, and where to put other punctuation marks. This will be looking at the U.S rules of grammar – the formations and convention in other variants of English might differ.

Quotations Marks

There are three main rules that surround the usage of quotation marks:

Double quotation marks are used to signify that a person is using speech.

Example: - When I was young, my father warned me, “Look in both direction before you cross the road.”

Single quotation marks are used to mark quotes in quotes.

Example: - “I remember read Oscar Wilde’s quote ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ and feeling so inspired,” the creative writer coach said.

When dialogue extends across several paragraphs, use quotation marks at the start of each paragraph, but only use the closing quotation make when the speech ends.

Example: - Rupert nodded and said, "Yeah I think you're correct. If we lay the carpet before painting the ceiling, we'll need dust sheets.

But if we do the ceiling before laying the new carpet it should be fine.”

If the quote is at the end of a sentence, always put the full stop inside the quotation marks.

Incorrect: - The bus driver said, “This is your stop”.

Correct: - The bus driver said, “This is your stop.”

Question marks and exclamation should be placed inside the quotation mark if they apply to the person's speech.

Incorrect: - The boy screamed, “Watched out the ceiling is falling”!

Correct: - The boy screamed, “Watched out the ceiling is falling!”

When the quote is simply embedded in a larger sentence that is a question or exclamation the punctuation should be placed outside the speech marks.

Incorrect : -How did you feel when the newscaster said, “JFK had been shot?”

Correct: - How did you feel when the newscaster said, “JFK had been shot”?

If a speech tags fall before the quote use a comma before the quotation marks to separate them.

Incorrect: - My brother said “I’m telling mom that you stole the cookies from the jar.”

Correct: - My brother said, “I’m telling mom that you stole the cookies from the jar.”

If the speech tag comes after the quotation marks, then the coma should be placed in the speech marks

Incorrect: - “Just be back in time for tea” My mum warned me before I went to play.

Correct: - “Just be back in time for tea,” My mum warned me before I went to play.

When a sentence is interrupted with a speech tag, a comma should be placed after the first segment of speech and at the end of the speech tag.

Incorrect: - “No” Karen said wrinkling her nose in disgust “That’s just all kinds of wrong.”

Correct: - “No,” Karen said wrinkling her nose in disgust, “That’s just all kinds of wrong.”

It is important to learn how to use quotation marks and punctuation correctly. These rules act as a convention between reader and writer, and as such, using them will make your work easier to read and understand. Without following these rules, your dialogue might be confusing and messy to the reader, which means it will not convey the message you want it to.

Dialogue: Where to find more resources

Here is a collection of some great links that will aid you in crafting the perfect narrative essay , and making sure you get your dialogue quotation spot on. You’ll be writing an amazing narrative essay in no time at all.

• How to Write a Critical Lens Essay
• How To Write A Lab Report
• How to Write An Impressive Personal Statement
• How to Write an Exemplification Essay
• How To Write a Follow-up Letter

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How to quote a dialogue answer’s here.

June 7, 2019

It is essential to understand the meaning of quoting dialogue before we learn how to quote dialogue in an essay. As you continue to write your essay, you may wish to refer to what other people said without making any changes to their phrases. The application of quotes comes in handy at this place. You can refer to the statements of other people in two ways. You can either use active or reported speech. Quotation involves the use of direct speech as you are referring to what another person said directly.

Importance of Writing Dialogue in an Essay

Several benefits come with quoting dialogue in your essay. These include:

• It makes your statement more valid because you are using the words of another person to refer to a point. It is good to have reference in your work as it will help the reader to understand the origin on your arguments and there will be no doubt especially if it is a quote dialogue.
• Quote dialogue also displays your proficiency in grammar. Most people don’t include quotations in their essays because they need to follow some punctuation rules such as having a comma before quotation. Most students prefer reporting like quoting because they don’t want to mess up with the set guidelines.
• Quotes make your essay outstanding because the reader will get first-hand information the way it was said. When reporting dialogue, you can omit some words that are crucial in supporting your points. However, when you use quotations, you are sure that you will state everything and hence your essay will have strong points.

It is good to use long quotes as long as you adhere to the set rules. If you don’t know how to quote dialogue, seek for help as this can change the meaning of your work and mess it up. Here are some of the things that you need to put into consideration before moving further.

Tips on How to Quote Dialogue in an Essay

• Don’t quote all the sections of your essay. Inserting too much quotations in your paper will make it boring to the readers as you will tend to over-rely on the words from other people. It will reduce the originality of your paper and the reader may undermine your creative ability as you are depending on the words of other people.
• Let your quotes be precise and avoid anything that is not related to the context of your writing. Do an analysis of the quote you wish to use and make sure that the impression that you are bringing out from the dialogue is related to what the essay is talking about.
• Only quote the words that vividly relate to what you are discussing in the essay. You will not have an organized piece of work if you just quote haphazardly. You may find yourself bringing up another meaning that is completely contrary to what you were saying.
• Avoid including long quotes in your essay because they can confuse your reader and make him fall off from your essay.

How to Quote Dialogue Example

There are different rubrics and formats for follow when quoting various phrases in your college essay. It all depends with the type and length of dialogue that you are referring. Here are a few illustrations for various quotes:

• Quoting a Short Paragraph That Has Less Than Four Lines

James insisted on the spying character of Desmond unworthy in the book: “The scholar’s eyes glowed so much on her that Dominic held her over his heart.” (Think wise 88)

• Quoting a Whole Passage

It will help you to summarize and not write the whole passage. You will refer to the passage using the simplest form of quotation. The use of length quotations in an essay is not a good practice in writing. It is good to make them as short as possible.

Existing Format for Dialogue Quotation

You should learn how to quote dialogue because making an error in the quotation can change the whole meaning of your essay and cause a misunderstanding. The most important thing is the format as it will dictate whether your quotation is right or wrong. You need to follow several rules in the quotation:

• Use one single quotation inside the above double marks. The case applies if there is a dialogue inside a quote. After using the double quotes at both ends, you may wish to introduce a dialogue of a specific character inside the quote. At this point, you will be expected to use single quotes.

For Instance “The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Rose said, ‘Lazy girls cannot help you to find some work to do!!’”

You may also quote the dialogue by reporting it and then use parenthesis at the end. For Instance You need to think before leaping (Faraday 57).

• Use block quotes to prove something in your essay. Block quote referencing is where you put the dialogue in indents for each line with no quotation makes.

It is a perfect example on how to quote dialogue between two characters.

It is crucial to go through various how to quote dialogue examples for you to become an expert in quoting dialogue. Exposing you to various samples will benefit you in several ways. These include understanding various dialogue quotes formats like Purdue owl and avoiding spelling and punctuation errors. Punctuation is a crucial element in quotation dialogue as it identifies the various characters in the quote. The use of wrong punctuation can change the whole meaning of your sentence. These examples will help you to gain the skills that you need in your day to day writing. The other thing you need to learn is how to quote dialogue from a play. This guide will help you to learn how to quote dialogue in your essay in the best way possible.

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Rachael Ritchey

Texting Conversations in Writing: What’s the best format?

I was reading a great post on Dan Alatorre’s blog today, “3 Ways to Show a Text Conversation” (that’s no longer available). It was talking about how to write text messaging in our manuscripts. He presented several ways of accomplishing it, but after some research and feedback he felt only one was a truly worthwhile way.

The problem with it, as Dan mentioned, is that there is no standard format for writing a text message conversation into a story. He suggested the best format possible be made the standard. 

I had a thought about what I would assume texting talk should look like when reading a story. Here’s my spin:

What about offset like in the box without the box? You know? I’m going to write a quick story piece and insert a section of text talk to try to illustrate what I mean.

In advance, I’m sorry for the screen shot. I wanted to make sure the formatting would show and make sense.

Gretchen looked at her watch and flopped down on the couch with an exasperated huff. She’d gotten home from work expecting to spend the afternoon with her boyfriend, but his text was nothing short of a downer. Dating a firefighter definitely had its annoying moments, but she couldn’t deny he sure looked good in suspenders.

With this it’s like a double tab (and by tab I don’t mean really tab! Use the ruler/indent features to properly format) for one person and a triple tab for the POV person  (I’m being lazy and using this term for the character from whose perspective we are seeing).

For consistency, the POV person would always be the triple tabbed one (farther to the right) like in a text box on your phone. The person texting you is always on your left and you are always on the right (or at least that’s how it is on my phone and computer).

Keeping the lines shorter and having double space between speakers also gives the appearance of texting. The POV is not in italics while the other person is. I’ve never thought of trying to write text conversations in a book, so it’s an interesting concept to consider.

Something like this hearkens back to how long quotes, songs, and other added elements are offset within a story. It relieves the need for beats (unless you want to add in what the POV character is doing or thinking while texting, which I think is a good thing) and dialogue tags for the texts.

I’ve never read texting within a story before, so this is a new concept for me, but I’m curious to know what you think of this possible method. It would be great to make sure we as writers have a consistent way of writing text message conversations in our manuscripts that are both easy for us to format and easy for our readers to follow.

I’m not sure how this element would be rendered with some software when auto formatting into epub and mobi formats, but I’d be curious to know.

But if I were to put texting into my manuscript, this is probably–and I’m way far away from 100% on it– how I would accomplish text message dialogue in a manuscript. Am I way off base or on to something? 🙂

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40 responses to “Texting Conversations in Writing: What’s the best format?”

[…] solution I came across for the formatting issues above is using tabs to format text. Here is an […]

‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ does it nicely. I had never seen it before. It was so natural that I came to anticipate their next conversation. I no longer have the books so can’t say exactly how it was formatted, but there were italics, maybe names, and it was indented I believe. The texting of their banter was beautiful.

Like Liked by 1 person

Would you say it was similar to this? I think with the advancement of technology, eventually it will be that texting conversations will look just like the screen layout of a phone. Even ebook will have that ability. At the point, I think it would be great to just name yourself and someone who would be willing to text back and forth with you the names of your characters and then get a screen print of the back and forth dialogue of the two characters to put as an image in the book. 🙂

An interesting topic. I recently had a story published with a text conversation by a trade publisher, and he offset it, but he didn’t use the shorter lines. I think I like it better that way, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. 🙂

Like Liked by 2 people

I figure the more we can make it look like texting the better. Congrats on another published story, Cathleen! I sure miss our regular chats on here. How is everything else going?

I tried putting an emoji with a text when I first formatted a book for Kindle – when I uploaded and previewed, the darn thing kept appearing on top of the text no matter what I did. I ended up deleting it.

That’s exactly the main issue with formatting that we are essentially discussing. I’m hoping we can find a consistent and easy way. It’s frustrating when the formatting won’t stick.

Same thing happened to me! Most annoying.

[…] Texting Conversations in Writing: What’s the best format? BY RACHAEL RITCHEY […]

I just read Dan’s post. I like your idea, Rachael. It feels and looks more text-like. My only concern would be the interruption of sentences that describe movement and other things going on, so I might add the persons name before each text piece to lessen confusion. But then again, adding text messages to a story is something I haven’t tried yet, so I can’t say for sure what I’d like best yet. 🙂 I do like the “tabs” idea of yours though! And like you said, it’d be interesting to find a way to make it work for ebooks. It’s a mystery for you to solve, Detective Rachael! I look forward to what solutions you come up with! 😀

haha I’ll keep mulling it over. No matter how you look at it, texting-talk in a story just looks out of place. I like to imagine some really cool formatting feature in the future that is basically a box that looks like a standard phone screen with all the little icons and time and stuff at the top and then the text bubbles below that…it would be this cool thing the author would just input the text of the conversation into to make it look like a phone screen on paper for those bits. Would be so cool…

Loved it! Linked back to this post. So timely for me. Thanks.

Thanks Jean! It caught my attention and now I can’t think of much else. hahaha

Posting tomorrow! Hope you like it. Threw in my thoughts, for the 2 cents they’re worth. Let me know what you think.

Can’t wait to read it! 🙂 Thank you!

This is how my Skype transcripts come out if you copy them. Or close. I mean with time and who says what

Ahhh! I see. I’ve never tried to copy out a Skype transcript, but then I’ve barely uses Skype. haha I should have more conversations that way. 🙂

Interesting idea, may be useful someday, and your proposed format looks good too! Thanks!

Thanks Ellie! The only issue is testing to see if it’s easy to get the formatting to “stick” when published for ebook! 🙂 I’m glad it might be useful.

In the worst case scenario you can do like this: 5:03 JACK: whatsup 5:05 SALLY: chillin 5:06 JACK: I’d warm you up now 🙂

Five minutes. No answer. Ten, fifteen minutes. Jack nervously devoured his fingernails and kicked himself for a blunter, as if saying ‘Too much, you idiot’. Finally the coveted ‘ping’ came through.

5:28 SALLY: ummmm 5:29 JACK: just kidding! Seriously! When is the com201 paper due?

HAHA Love the awkward flirting. haha I think the time stamp is an interesting touch. 🙂 Otherwise that’s similar to something Dan mentioned on his blog post about it. 🙂

Oh I did not read that post 😉 I will now

Like Liked by 3 people

TESS! You’ve NEVER texted, ever?! Not in the history of the world? hahaha You might have the right idea. Really, if you’ve ever had an instant conversation on Facebook messaging, Google Hangouts, or some other online real time messenger then you’ve texted because it’s basically the same thing. 🙂

Oooh. When Messenger first came along, I chatted. Huh. Now my memory’s going too. Waa. +(~.~)+

haha who needs it? 😉

Nice! Save the tech stuff for computers. 🙂

I saw Dan’s post too, and thought it was so interesting. I like what you have done here, and I was thinking the same thing with having text show up like it does on your phone. I did a short conversation of text in one of my Blogbattle stories, but I indented the POV person, and then used the right justification button for the second person, so that one was on the left and the other on the right.

I am all about the formatting, and also like to format things so that they are appealing to the eye, and think of the flow for the reader. With that said, the way I did it probably would not be a good solution, because the eyes would be darting from left to right, and might be frustrating for a reader. I do like this solution you came up with, but…as far as flow goes, since we read from left to right, maybe reverse it, where the POV person should be the double tab, and the second person the triple tab. But my thought had always been, have it as close to the real thing as possible, within the limits of book formatting.

What I have actually seen in books are text messages that are formatted like an email. These were very lengthy text messages, so it worked. There was a bold header with the two and from names, and the message was in italics. That would not work for short text messages, or how text messages really are in real life. It’s a great topic to explore, because text messaging isn’t going anywhere, and is just another element for writers to use to draw their readers in 🙂

Just a humble opinion from a novice writer, but an expert reader 😉

I lovehearing your thoughtful opinion, Carrie Ann. It’s great to get a broader understanding of the topic. I have no idea why I’m feeling so driven to figure this out except I enjoy puzzles and I agree that texting is not going anywhere any time soon. I’m sure we’ll see more and mite of it in books as time goes on.

I included a text stream in my first novel and did it by alternating the text alignment so that it was consistent with how a text box would show on a phone. However, this proved to be an absolute pain in the tuckus when it came time to format my book for an e-reader.

That’s my concern with it, too. I love solving puzzles and problems, so I think that’s probably why this is bugging me. There has got to be a way to format texting conversation that reads well and is not a headache to format. Haha

I have sometimes made use of texts in my short stories, but never thought of formatting. I don’t like texts packet with only letters but no words, for some reason even as a teen I did write out most words except when I’m a rush.

Haha I go back and forth when using texting abbreviations. It is related to the timev when texting was not unlimited and you were only allowed a certain amount of characters per text. Shorthand became economical! 🙂

I read the linked article, but I just love your idea. It really reads like text messages.

Thanks, Irena. I couldn’t get the idea out if my head yesterday. Haha

I’d just do this – 😎☕️- texts don’t go on longer than that, do they? 😉

LOL No, they usually don’t 🙂 It might be hard to put that into a book, though. Let’s make it a thing! 😉

Even that was twice what I say to most people.

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Engaging Students in Class Discussions

Class discussions can be enjoyable, challenging, uncomfortable, stimulating, complex, and enlightening. Facilitating discussions is among the most important of all teaching methods because it encourages students to apply, test, and extend their learning in dialogue. Discussion is essentially structured application with immediate feedback, with rapid iteration. It is the place where novices take steps towards speaking with the facility of experts, where students can begin to think of themselves as invited into the discipline.

It is also perhaps the most challenging art for the teacher to master. Facilitating a discussion with all it entails – asking the right questions, listening and responding fully to participants while simultaneously fitting each comment into your overall plan and also thinking of how to connect it to the next step or idea, all while keeping it related it to the essential learning of the course but also allowing for the organic emergence of fresh ideas – requires concentration and creativity.

Below, we offer some guidance and suggestions to consider when incorporating discussion into your teaching strategy:

Benefits of Discussion as a Teaching Strategy

Preparing the students and environment for discussion.

We also recommend reviewing our resources on facilitating discussions and encouraging student participation in discussion .

When deciding when and how to use discussions, consider some of the benefits and types of learning that can occur and how discussions might support student learning in your course. Discussions can help students to:

• practice using vocabulary, frameworks, or theories of a discipline
• use evidence and examples to support an argument 
• connect and engage intellectually with a subject
• encounter, consider, and analyze a diverse range of perspectives
• build a learning community where students are co-creating knowledge

Short, medium, and long discussions and class size considerations  Depending on your course, you may want to plan class discussions regularly or only on certain days for key topics. Some discussions may take an entire class period, for example, within a small seminar class; however you can also include short or medium-length discussions within your course, alternating with periods of lecturing. For medium and large sized classes, pair or small group discussions can work especially well, since it can be challenging to hold a discussion with the entire class.

Short discussion: Turn to your neighbor (1-5 minutes) . Students turn to a person sitting next to them to discuss a question prompt. Sometimes this technique can be paired with answering a polling question or raising hands. This works in any class size, but is especially a good option for large classes in rooms with fixed seating.

Medium-length discussion: Think-Pair-Share (10-20 minutes) . Students first think or work on a problem individually, then pair up or form small groups for discussion. At the end, you can ask students to share what they discussed with the whole class. Note that the larger the group size, the more time they will need to discuss. For example, in a group of four, if everyone talks for two minutes, they will need at least eight minutes to discuss. This strategy can work in all class sizes, but pairs may be best in classrooms with fixed seating in rows.

Long discussion (20-60 minutes). This type of discussion allows for more in-depth and nuanced consideration of a complex topic. These types of discussions tend to work well in smaller classes and need more active facilitation by the instructor . You may consider starting class with a warm-up strategy . Other techniques such as gallery walks, concept mapping, or case studies are well suited for these longer discussions . To prepare for a long discussion we suggest writing a list of main question prompts or activity directions and sharing them ahead of time to allow students who may want extra time to prepare or think about the questions. Follow-up questions and further discussion can emerge from the main prompts. Preparing a handout or slide with questions can create structure.

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Build rapport: Spend time early in the semester building connections within the classroom, learning about your students, and helping them learn about each other. Icebreakers and structured activities can help with this. Give students several low-stakes practice opportunities to express themselves, develop confidence, and build interpersonal skills and familiarity with the rest of the class before graded discussions even start. This also works to develop a supportive and welcoming environment full of sharing, listening, and showing respect. Their regular comments and contributions need to feel valued and honored by you and their classmates. In small and medium sized classes, using name tents or name tags can help people refer to each other by name during discussions.

Communicate guidelines and structure : Discussion structure might look different in various courses so clarify the format of your discussions. Share guidelines for discussions, explaining their purpose. Outline your goals for these discussions and how students can succeed.

• Build community agreements together : Your learning community can create a shared  contribution of outlined behaviors to maintain respect and decrease instances of incivility.
• Communicate expectations and grading criteria : It can help to provide accountability for students to prepare for discussion, participate in the discussion itself, as well as reflect at the end of the discussion. Accountability could be in the form of a pre-class reading quiz on Canvas , annotating the readings before class using social annotation tools, posting questions or reflections on an online discussion board , completing in-class handouts, taking a photo of individual or group work in class, and uploading it to Canvas, or filling out an index card at the end of class with the answer to a reflection question.
• As the instructor, you should also plan how you will grade this work. You might grade some work as complete/incomplete or if your participation grading is more complex, providing a detailed rubric with success criteria is essential. Here is one example of a discussion rubric .

Model effective discussion : Depending on the course level or major, you might have students who haven’t really experienced or witnessed college-level discussions before. You can describe the difference between conversation in class and academic conversation which involves students using specific vocabulary, phrases, and statements in your discipline that allow them to articulate and practice critical thinking. To demonstrate and practice what effective discussions look like before going into a graded experience you can participate in frequent academic discussion activities, such as energizer activities that share values or opinions, scenarios, and case studies that generate perspectives, conversational starter activities that practice generating questions, listening activities, or pre-class activities such as social annotation or discussion boards on the reading.

Practice foundational skills : Use these low-stakes practice opportunities to develop several pre-skills before diving into the full discussions.

Foundational skills with activities to practice :

• Active listening : Peer summaries, listening circles, note-taking challenges, paraphrasing exercises
• Asking good questions : conversational starter activities
• Recognizing assumptions : Case study analysis, assumption checklists, role reversal, debate prep, media literacy exercises
• Backing up claims with credible evidence : evidence-based writing prompts, fact-checking assignments, annotated bibliographies, research competitions, source evaluation tasks. The Cornell Library has guides on evaluating sources and media literacy or could work with you on developing guides or activities specifically for your course.
• Assessing other people’s claims : peer review workshops, logical fallacy hunts, claim analysis discussions, critical reading exercises, mock trials
• Sharing purposefully with an audience in mind : audience-specific writing, oral presentations with feedback, role-play scenarios, creative projects, audience analysis
• Building upon a conversation : structured group discussions, dialogue journals, collaborative storytelling
• Challenging each other with respect : debate sessions, conflict resolution role-play, critique guidelines, and reflection exercises.

Build students’ content knowledge : When entering your course, students might have little context or prior knowledge on the topic. How much do students need to know before engaging in your critical discussion? You can decide, based on your learning outcomes, how much content knowledge you’d like them to develop. Consider giving them guidance on how to read and evaluate academic or other sources or provide reading questions. Communicate to students if you want readings or outside material referenced in the discussion. Social annotation can be a great pedagogical tool for getting students to engage in critical reading.

Assess and adjust the physical space : Is the physical space conducive to hosting effective discussions? Visit the classroom ahead of time to see how the space will work for your intended discussions – you may need to see if you can make adjustments to the room, adjust your teaching plan, or look into requesting a different room. For example, in a room with fixed seats in rows, you might use paired discussions (talk to your neighbor) as a strategy. Consider the following:

• Acoustics : can they hear others in the class? Is the room echoey? Would it help for you to use a microphone?
• Orientation : choosing a U-shape or circle layout that supports the type of discussion if it is possible to move the furniture.
• Distractions : consider lighting, movement outside of windows, temperature, air quality, scent, uncomfortable seating or tables in the way, and distractions from other students. Some of these will not be under your control, but you can check in with students if there are factors that can be adjusted that would make them more comfortable.

For more on engaging students with class discussion, visit Facilitating Discussion and Encouraging Student Participation in Discussions.

References and Further Reading:

Eberly Center, Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation (2024) Discussions. Carnegie Mellon.

Davis, B. G. (1993) Tools for Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brookfield, S. D. and S. Preskill. (1999). Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

How to apply to graduate school as an international student

Julie Collins is the Assistant Dean of Graduate Admissions & Financial Aid at Northwestern University’s Medill school of Journalism, Media & Integrated Marketing Communications

Navigating the complexities of graduate school applications can be daunting, especially as an international student. As you begin researching different programs, you’ll notice schools often ask for various documents as part of their application process, and you may be wondering what admissions officers are hoping to learn about you across these various documents. So let’s dig in! 

How do different application documents factor into the review process? 

The admissions application is the initial engagement between a prospective student and their selected university for their graduate education. It’s how prospective students introduce themselves to the admissions committee, so that we can make informed decisions about each applicant, and select students that are a good fit.

The goal of any admissions office is to identify students who have a genuine interest in the offered course of study and have the potential to be successful in the program. The admissions application and required supplemental documents are integral to this process, as together they allow applicants to demonstrate their academic knowledge, highlight relevant experiences, and document their interest in the program. 

In my admissions office, we identify strong communications skills in our applicants by looking at the following: 

• We review College transcript(s) for courses that afforded the applicant with numerous opportunities to write and communicate their ideas. 
• Resumes help with showing how the applicant applied their communication skills outside of the classroom, such as through extracurriculars, internships and employment. 
• Professional statements allow applicants to share their stories and why they are interested in our graduate program, allowing us to get to know the applicant and how they think critically about ideas that are of interest to them. 
• Our application process also includes an admissions interview , to give applicants an opportunity to share their story and convey why our program aligns with their career goals. The admissions interview is one of my favorite parts of the application process, as it allows us to get to know applicants in a deeper way. 

Why do different programs have different requirements?

While all admissions offices are looking for certain things—such as academic excellence, relevant experience, and a clear sense of purpose—it’s very common for schools to request additional information based on what it takes to succeed in a particular program. This requires an understanding of the program’s academic focus and how it prepares students for careers in their selected profession. 

A program’s focus typically aligns with the admissions application and the application’s requirements. For instance, you might see a mathematics program ask for higher scores in quantitative sections of standardized tests, or that those applying to study architecture provide a portfolio, to demonstrate their ability to design and conceptualize spatial environments. By tailoring the application requirements in this way, programs can better assess an applicant's readiness and potential contribution to the discipline.

The two graduate programs we recruit and admit students to at Medill —Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications—require strong verbal communication skills. In addition, applications must show evidence of their ability to write with clarity and oftentimes with the pressure of a looming deadline, when the ability to convey ideas quickly and concisely becomes crucial.

Why do schools ask for language test scores? 

For our international students, scores from language proficiency tests like the DET are crucial for our admissions review process. A language proficiency score helps us be sure that an applicant has the language skills they need to participate effectively once they enroll, both in the classroom and on campus. 

We use the DET’s timed writing and the video response in relationship with the language test scores to make informed admissions decisions. The testing elements of the DET provide accurate assessment of a prospective student’s writing, speaking, and listening ability to complete graduate level work that relies heavily on strong communication skills. 

How do admissions officers use different parts of language tests? 

In addition to the scores, our office uses the timed writing and video portions of the DET to not only assess an applicant’s language proficiency, but their ability to think and write critically in a short duration of time. 

The timed writing exam of the DET helps us to determine an applicant’s ability to share their thoughts and convey their ideas in a written format. Unlike their professional statement, where most applications will take several months to craft, the timed-writing test requires them to think through their response and provide rationale for their stated position in a short amount of time. 

The audio and video portion of the DET allows for an applicant to respond to a question prompt to demonstrate their language ability while thinking on their feet to provide a cogent response to a unique question. Similarly to the writing portion, the audio and visual portion of the test offers applicants another way to demonstrate their English ability and present their ideas beyond the admissions application.

Should students use AI when writing their application essays? 

Admissions officers are aware that new technologies like AI and ChatGPT have the potential to impact the materials students submit. While we know that some students might use the technology to support the writing of their essays, at this time, the truth is that it’s difficult for schools to determine to what extent this technology is being used by prospective applicants. 

This is another reason why schools often ask for multiple pieces of information—only through examining a diversity of materials can we get closer to a true sense of the person applying. 

While it may be tempting for students to use ChatGPT to help them with their essays, I would advise against it. The point of the essay is to show the admissions office who you truly are as a student. In my experience, overuse of AI can result in poorly crafted essays that limit admissions offices’ ability to get to know an applicant, or to assess their ability to write and think clearly. 

Use your application to tell your story! 

When applying to a graduate program, it's important to consider how your entire application reflects your readiness and potential for success, both academically and professionally.  The various components of your application, including relevant tests, work together to present a holistic picture of your qualifications and aspirations.

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More From Forbes

How to use ai to make money in 2024, from research.

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Gen Z and Millennial professionals who are freelancers and small business owners, are foremost in ... [+] using AI in their businesses to make more money, a new survey has found

Since ChatGPT was launched in 2022, Gen Z and Millennial professionals who work as freelancers and small business owners, have leaped at the opportunity to leverage AI as a means of increasing their revenue.

Although it may not be used as a direct source of income in itself, young professionals within the 18-34-year-old age group consider artificial intelligence to be an all-in-one resource that drives revenue through relieving the burden off many aspects of their work, enabling them to be more productive.

For example, in an Amex Trendex survey conducted by American Express in June 2024, which surveyed over 1,000 Gen Z and Millennial professionals, nearly six in 10 respondents stated that they currently use AI in their business, compared to 34% of Gen X and Baby Boomers. (Approximately 503 businesses were run by 10 or less workers, which would have inevitably included freelance professionals or single-person contractors as well.)

The survey's findings notably concluded that Gen Zers and Millennials mostly used AI for "automating routine tasks and cash flow analytics, while Gen-X and Baby Boomers were more likely to use it for chatbots and virtual assistants, fraud protection, and workforce management."

Across the board, nearly half of businesses surveyed agreed that because of the way they used AI, they felt more prepared and had a greater chance of standing out compared to competitors, thus increasing their chances of making more money.

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When asked about their most common use cases for AI in their work lives when running their businesses, these three themes emerged:

• Analyzing customer data (39%)
• Chatbots and virtual assistants (39%)
• Content creation (33%)

Let's dig into each one further.

1. Analyzing Customer Data

Customer data analysis is an essential exercise for professionals regardless of what stage of business they are in—whether one-man bands as freelancers or managing up to 500 employees. This crucial step enables you to gain business intelligence so you can see how customers interact with your company and its services/products, what their preferences and pain points are, ways you can streamline processes to make things easier for them, and areas you can deliver better quality service. Using AI, you can not only uncover this data, but also be armed with actionable insights.

For example, Insight7 is an AI-powered tool that analyzes collections of interviews—regardless of their format—and uncovers powerful insights for high-quality decisions.

HubSpot also has a Make My Persona tool that you can use to quickly and easily generate a customer persona, enabling you to map out your services and tailor them to suit the needs of specific demographics, which saves you time and money doing guesswork and enables you to target the right clientele.

AI tools can help you unpack customer data insights that enable you to boost your overall revenue

2. Chatbots And Virtual Assistants

Because of the emergence of chatbots and AI-powered customer service that provide round-the-clock support and enables rapid response and satisfaction rates, traditional customer service roles are dwindling in popularity, with a 5% decline in demand reported by the BLS (this figure may have plummeted more due to the surging popularity of chatbots since BLS published this figure).

Small business owners and freelancers can tap into the opportunity to save themselves money in the long run, as instead of hiring many customer support agents, they can provide quality answers to frequently asked questions, in a fraction of the time and cost, through using a chatbot.

Additionally, instead of hiring virtual assistants who deal with admin work such as scheduling meetings, organizing calendars, responding to and sorting through emails, etc., freelancers and other small business owner can tap into the enormous possibilities of using time management and task management apps, also known as AI productivity apps. These include Clara AI, Taskade, and ProofHub.

3. Content Creation

Perhaps one of the most popular use cases for AI when it comes to making money, and especially making money from home, is content creation. Content marketing is a $72 billion-dollar industry, and the reason it is so popular is because businesses are learning that customers care more about quality information and getting answers to their questions online, than cheesy ads shown on TV or in flyers.

Content marketing includes blogging, article writing, social media posts (written content and audio/visual content), and email newsletters. Generative AI cuts the content creation process short through helping you create entire posts (which you can fact and grammar check for quality and align it with your business tone of voice), creating article outlines, giving you content inspiration, video and audio scripts, and repurposing content as well. This works in two ways to help you make money:

First, if you are a freelance content creator (like a travel blogger) or provide content marketing services as a freelance digital marketing consultant, this saves you an enormous amount of time and gives you room to be more creative.

Second, if your business is not focused on content marketing, you can still make money from this since this is one essential avenue from which you will obtain clients. In terms of AI tools, ChatGPT is one obvious option, but there are others such as Semrush , which hosts a variety of AI content planning and content generation tools suitable for social media and other forms of digital marketing.

Content marketing is one of the most popular use cases for generative AI tools

Ultimately, while there are several use cases for artificial intelligence, these are the three that stand out the most, in which small businesses and freelancers have experienced the most benefits in terms of revenue, quality, and productivity. From lesser-known names such as Insight7 to more popular platforms and apps such as Hubspot and ChatGPT, there are plenty of ways you can cut down on your costs and make more money as a freelancer or professional starting your own business, using AI.

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Learning a language? Four ways to smash through the dreaded ‘intermediate plateau’

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Swansea University

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Jill Boggs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Swansea University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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How can I improve my English? This was a question frequently posed by my students in South Korea. My initial advice was straightforward – dedicate time and effort.

However, both my students and I found this advice unsatisfying and overly simplistic. As a fellow language learner who had reached only an intermediate level of Korean after years in the country, I empathised with their frustration. What could propel the linguistic skills of my South Korean students and I forward?

For language learners dedicating hours each week to mastering a second language, the journey often feels interminable, as if they’re making no progress. The advice to “keep calm and carry on” hardly seemed adequate.

The breakthrough came after I left Korea, a revelation that arrived too late for my students there but not for countless others. I learned about language scholar Paul Nation’s own teaching methodology . He suggests a balanced approach to language learning and it transformed my entire perspective. He proposes that language education should be evenly divided among four critical strands:

1. Meaning-focused input

This involves being exposed to the language through listening and reading. It’s not just about understanding the gist of what is said or written but engaging deeply with the content. Watching movies, listening to music, or reading books in the target language can improve comprehension skills.

2. Meaning-focused output

Speaking and writing in the language are just as important. This encourages learners to produce language, thereby helping to cement knowledge and build confidence.

Language learners should seek opportunities to converse with other users of the language being learned, and not necessarily “native” speakers either. Writing emails or even starting a blog in the target language can also help.

3. Language-focused learning

This includes more traditional study methods such as grammar exercises, vocabulary flashcards and pronunciation practice. While these activities have developed an unfortunate, and perhaps unfair, reputation for being tedious, these tasks are essential for building a strong foundation in any language.

It needn’t be dry and boring either – you can make a game of it. One of the motivational benefits of language-focused learning is how clearly improvement can be seen. Yesterday, you may only have known 47% of vocabulary items, but today you scored 72%.

It can be harder to detect incremental improvements in listening or speaking, for example. But this particular strand is an opportunity to show yourself how much you’ve learned. Language games and apps for drilling vocabulary and grammar can be fun and fulfilling while providing a sense of accomplishment at the same time.

4. Fluency practice

Finally, fluency practice challenges learners to use the language smoothly and quickly, without having to pause for thought. This could involve timed sessions of conversation practice, speed-reading exercises, or impromptu speech drills.

Notice that this isn’t just about speech. Why is reading or writing fluently important? If reading and writing are slow, tedious processes, will we as learners want to do them very often? Probably not, so learning to use language with ease facilitates yet more language learning.

By integrating these four strands equally into your study routine, even outside of the classroom, the path to language mastery becomes clearer and more structured. If you’re feeling stuck in your language journey, examine the habits you’re using to learn.

Are you primarily using flashcards for vocabulary and grammar? These activities are useful, but they should only comprise about 25% of your total learning time. Are you primarily watching films? Again, consider how you might balance that meaning-focused input (if that’s how you’re using them) with learning activities in the other three strands.

Not every study session needs to comprise these four strands. But your overall study habits should include more or less equal time in each one.

And about my own Korean ability, once I started teaching my applied linguistics undergraduates in the UK about Paul Nation’s four strands, I became aware of the fact that most of my own Korean learning was in the language-focused learning strand.

So, I put down my flashcards and started reading Korean novels and watching Korean films. Despite no longer living in Korea, where I had enjoyed the advantage of being surrounded by the language, my language skills increased sharply while living in the UK. This surprised my Korean friends and I when I returned there for visits.

For those like me who are feeling stagnant in their language learning journey, re-balancing your approach may just be the key to breaking through the plateau.

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