style - How should dialog be formatted?

Is there any "official" rule that I should keep in mind when formatting character dialog? Line breaks, placement of quotes, mixing dialog with action descriptions etc.

For example, I want to build a sentence like: "Look Jones, this will be yours someday" and describe the speaker point to some building during the word "this". How would you format such a sentence?

1. 
   

   "Look Jones," Dan pointed at the castle, "this will be yours someday"

   
   



2. 
   

   "Look Jones, this" Dan pointed at the castle "will be yours someday"

   
   


3. 
   

   etc.

   
   

As you can see, I have problems with comma placement, quote placement and general formatting.

Advice?

Answer

First, commas indicate pauses, so put them where a speaker or reader would naturally pause.

"Look, Jones,"

That one is important, because there's always a bit of a pause between a command and a name.

Second, imagine how your speakers are moving physically. Does Dan just point briefly? Does he only mean the castle will belong to Jones? Does he make a sweeping gesture to take in the castle, the grounds, the cliff, and the sea? When does he point?

Gestures mean pauses, for dramatic effect. A short pause is a comma, while a longer pause can be indicated by a period or an m-dash. If you want to emphasize the castle (as opposed to the cliff, the sea, the horses, or the knights behind them), use italics. (I'm changing "Dan" to "he" only so there's no confusion about starting a new sentence.)

"Look, Jones." He pointed at the castle. "This will be yours someday."

"Look, Jones. This — " He pointed at the castle. " — will be yours someday."

"Look, Jones." He pointed at the castle. "This will be yours someday."

I sometimes trip over the m-dashes, but generally speaking, you end your quoted material with the m-dash, put your interrupter narration in the middle as a complete sentence, and then pick up the quoted material with an m-dash and a lowercase letter, not a new sentence.

Third, to answer your question more specifically, to use commas around interrupter narration:

• The narration itself, without the quoted material, should not be a complete sentence.


• The quoted material should continue a sentence.

"Look, Jones," said Dan, pointing at the castle, "and you'll see what I was speaking of before. This will be yours someday."

If the quoted material starts a new sentence, then end your sentence at the end of the interrupter narration.

"Look, Jones," said Dan, pointing at the castle. "This will be yours someday."