8 Tips for Using Quotes and Dialogue in Your Blog Posts

Quotes and dialogue are one of the most powerful tools in the writer’s toolbox. They bring your writing to life. They give your piece voice and make the words jump off the page. As the famous writer Stephen King once said, “What people say often conveys their character to others in ways of which they—the speakers—are completely unaware.”

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While most bloggers understand the power of quotes, they do not know how to format them properly. This post is a crash course in how to use and punctuate quotes in your writing.

Please note that there are exceptions to some of these rules (depending on whether you use the American standard or the UK standard). But for most part if you follow these rules you will be fine.

How to capitalize a quote

All quotes should be capitalized, except for fragments. If your quotes are not capitalised, your readers may think it is a partial quote with the ellipsis omitted.

Even when you quote someone mid-sentence, you should capitalise the quote.

As George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

How to extend a quote over multiple paragraphs

Say you want to break up the following quote into two paragraphs:

“I always say to people,” said Archer in an interview, “don’t write about goblins; don’t write about wizards just because they’re in. Write what you feel at ease with. Always remember Jane Austen. [She] lived in a small village, and wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of four daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of three daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of two daughters.”

Most people open and close the quote in each paragraph:

“I always say to people,” said Archer in an interview, “don’t write about goblins; don’t write about wizards just because they’re in. Write what you feel at ease with.”

“Always remember Jane Austen. [She] lived in a small village, and wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of four daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of three daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of two daughters.”

The correct way of doing this is not to close the quote at the end of each paragraph, only the last one:

“I always say to people,” said Archer in an interview, “don’t write about goblins; don’t write about wizards just because they’re in. Write what you feel at ease with.

“Always remember Jane Austen. [She] lived in a small village, and wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of four daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of three daughters. Then she wrote about her mother being unable to get rid of two daughters.”

How to edit a quote

It is amazing how many mistakes we make when speaking. It is only when you transcribe the speech to paper that you see these mistakes. As a writer then, you are allowed to clean up quotes.

For example, consider the following quote:

“There’s a 1000 people in the hall and they all love what I do.”

Clean it up so the verb agrees with the plural “people.”

“There are 1000 people in the hall and they all love what I do.”

The only exception is that if you want to make the author sound uneducated that you leave the quote in its original form.

How to add to a quote

If you need to add to a quote, do not simply include the extra words in the quote. Use the “[ ]” marker to show your additions.

As he said in an interview, “[The prosecution’s case] was weaker than Columbus’s claim that China was 10,000 miles closer than was the accepted wisdom at the time.”

How to include original errors without making yourself look silly

Say you want to insert a quote that is written incorrectly in its original form (whether by design or by mistake) but you do not want your readers to think that you are the source of the mistake.

The poster read, “Old skool remixes are the koolest.”

“Skool” and “koolest” are written incorrectly. To fix this, simply include [sic] after each of the words.

The poster read, “Old skool [sic] remixes are the koolest [sic].”

This lets the reader know that you are not the source of the error.

How to handle a quote within a quote

If you want to insert a quote that has a quote inside of it, use a pair of single quotation marks (‘ ’) to enclose the sub-quote.

“The driver said to me, ‘Where would you like to go today?’”

How to handle commas and periods in your quotes

Do you place commas and periods (full stops) outside or inside of the quotation marks? Answer: It depends. The American standard is that commas and periods go inside the quotation marks, regardless of logic:

As my grandfather used to say, “Better out than an angry tenant.”

The English standard is that commas and periods follow logic:

As my grandfather used to say, “Better out than an angry tenant”.

If you are unsure which standard to follow, include the commas and periods inside the quotation marks.

How to handle question marks and exclamation marks in your quotes

When it comes question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!) both American and English standards follow logic. So if the question is in the quote itself, place it inside of the quotation marks. Otherwise place it outside the quotation marks.

At that point he asked himself, “Is this worth the effort?”
Do you agree with the adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt”?

Conclusion

Follow these rules and your writing will look more professional, helping you establish authority in the mind of your blog readers.

If you know of other mistakes that I have not covered here (I know there are a few more) please share them with us in the comments section.

I’m not sure what the official answer is but putting it into bold or in italics are acceptable ways of doing it. If those are not available, like here, you can put asteriks around the word (*important* word). The use of double quote is fine but is frowned upon by most western style guides.

You probably shouldn’t use the quote tool to highlight one word. Highlighting it in bold or italics is a simple, effective way, because not only will it stand out from the rest of the text, but search engines also pay attention to that formatting.

By highlighting a word, you’re informing the user (and crawler) that the word is important.

I wouldn’t recommend using the asterisk method, as search engines don’t pick up on it and people look at that as more of an action … *smile* or *sigh* … but, hey, who knows. This might be where we’re heading seeing as that particular expression has been adopted by so many.

Thanks for the crash course reminders here. I’m constantly encouraging my readers to improve their writing in order to improve their blogging, and this provides the perfect fuel for accomplishing that task. Thank you.

It’s funny how certain tools of the content editing process aren’t used as much as others. The quotes tool, not only within our editors, but also in general as a part of the journalism language, has the potential to be just as powerful as headlines … maybe even more so.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself skimming magazine content … the two things that consistently stands out to me are the headlines and quotes, yet headlines take the cake in terms of how to break up content and capture the attention of skimming readers.

I agree completely. Quotes bring your writing to life. People talk about giving your piece voice and making the characters jump off the page – well quotes and dialogues are one of the best ways of doing that. Glad you feel the same way.

My uncle, a brilliant writer, used to use some creative strategy when it came to quotes. In his University History exams, he would write, “Was it not Winston Churchill who said, ‘All great men should be held accountable for their actions?'” (Or some other such nonsense remark). He would contrive the quote entirely, but felt that since it was phrased in the form of a question (…was it not…) he was off the hook. But his writing packed more punch as a result of the quotes. Needless to say, I’m not advocating this approach…just makes for a good anecdote.

Awesome article. I guess I should subscribe to your blog. I don’t want to miss out in the future. I recently started a blog and proofreading is my biggest headache! Thanks for the tips. Your new loyal fan.

I am so glad that eventually someone appreciated and talked about the power of using quotes! I say this because I had been told by a few people as to why I use quotes so often in my blog posts, but I guess now they would know!

This is the first time my confusion is cleared about handling commas and periods [full stop] in quotes. I never expected to read anything like this. This is truly amazing and I’m relieved to read this. I’ve learned so much from this. This is a great post and I’m sure many of us grown ups are not familiar with these concepts.

One point I’d add is that the use of [sic] can get tricky. Sometimes you really need to use it to show that it’s not you who has made an error; you’re just quoting what a person said or wrote. But when you’re responding to something written by someone whose native language is not English, it can come across as nit-picky and just rude to be throwing in [sic] all over the place when the meaning is clear.

I’ve been writing for a long time (and using quotes). I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t pass your test, but for the most part I’ve been doing everything right. Thanks for pointing these things out so I could make sure I was on track. :)

You make the use of quotations feel very easy! Thank you.
I love your examples, and the comparison between American Standard and British Standard.
The difference between the two, makes me feel a little less stupid for always second guessing myself when it comes to punctuation inside the quotes or out!

Thanks for this fantastic post. As an American living in Australia and writing for a mixed audience I get caught out all the time wondering if I should stick with what is used here in Australia or go with what I learned studying in the states. I appreciated your “when in doubt” notes.

Great post. I’m not a very good writer but I want to share my ideas to the world. I am currently looking for ways on how to improve my writing skill and this post answers some of my questions. Thank you. This is helpful..