Punctuating Dialog: Here's How It's Done

I’ve read quite a few manuscripts of late that had trouble punctuating their dialog correctly, so let’s go over that very quickly.

1. You should always have some sort of punctuation immediately before your closing quotation mark.

It can be a comma, a period, a semi-colon, question mark, exclamation point, em-dash, or ellipses; it can be almost any form of punctuation, but there must be punctuation of some sort. What you don’t want to do is this:

     “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday” Nora said.

There should be some sort of punctuation between yesterday and the closing quotation mark (a comma, in this case), and in all similar scenarios. There is almost no situation in which you’d be justified leaving out that closing punctuation.

2. If the dialog is followed by a dialog tag, then you cannot close the dialog with a period.

The dialog tag is that short little bit that identifies who is speaking: some variation of she said, he asked, I shouted, etc. If there is a dialog tag after your dialog, you cannot end the dialog with a period:

     INCORRECT: “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday.” Nora said.

     CORRECT: “I haven’t seen Aziz since class yesterday,” Nora said.

Note that this rule only applies to periods. Other ending punctuation such as question marks and exclamation points should not be affected by the dialog tag:

     “I think Aziz has been kidnapped!” she shouted.

     “What makes you think that?” he replied.

Note also that exclamation points and question marks in dialog do not end the sentence, so the dialog tag is not capitalized—as discussed in this post.

3. If dialog is interrupted, end it with an em dash. If it trails off, use ellipses.

     “We don’t have any reason to think—” he began.

     “I just know something is wrong!” she interrupted. “He could be hurt, or . . .”

Ellipses in dialog is a subject more thoroughly covered in this post.

4. If the dialog tag interrupts a sentence, then it should end with a comma. If it comes at the end of a sentence of dialog, it should end with a period, even if it is followed by more dialog.

     “Nora,” Aziz whispered, “please come after me.”

     “I’m calling the police,” Nora said. “I don’t care what you say.”

You’ll find more on this topic in this post.

If you're wondering, Aziz was totally kidnapped, but Nora saved him in time.

Punctuation Problems: Unfinished or Interrupted Dialog

When a person is speaking and doesn’t finish their thought, it happens in one of two ways. Either they trail off gradually, drawing out the last word and dropping in volume, or they cut off abruptly in mid-sentence or even mid-word.

Trailing off can indicate that the person has become lost in thought (and possibly forgotten to finish their sentence), that they have become distracted by something they see or hear, or that they are trying to suggest the unspoken final words without actually saying them. Whichever the circumstance, trailing off will always be indicated by ellipses at the end of the sentence:

     “Well, the experiment might work if we switched out the copper conductors . . .”

     “What in the world is going on . . .”

     “We do know someone who takes care of these sort of problems . . .”

Most writers use ellipses properly to indicate trailed-off dialog. However, I also often see them used to indicate speech that has cut off abruptly or been interrupted, which is incorrect. In those cases, the em dash is the appropriate punctuation:

     “I’ve figured it out!” Javid shouted. “The murderer is—”

     A gunshot cracked through the night, and Javid suddenly collapsed.

     “I am speaking,” Bernadette said, “even though I don’t—”

     “I am interrupting you, madam!”  Gabriel interrupted, “because I love the sound of my own—”

     “Well I shall simply interrupt you back, sir! For I must—”

     “Fool! My capacity for interrupting others far exceeds your own.”

Remember: ellipses indicate trailed-off dialog, and the em dash indicates abruptly cut-off dialog. No exceptions.

It's unfinished and incomplete, see?

Look, some elements of grammar and punctuation just don't lend themselves to perfect visual metaphors, all right? Trying to find a good picture for this post was hard. Thanks for reading, just move on now.

Constructing Proper Paragraphs with Dialog

In this post, I answered the question, “How do I know when to end one paragraph and start a new one?” I also mentioned in that article that we would discuss a few of the rules of paragraphing later. Welcome to later, friends!

There is one simple rule of writing paragraphs that I often see broken by new writers, and it relates to dialog: don’t have the dialog of more than one character in a single paragraph. If a new character begins to speak, make a new paragraph. It’s that simple.

     “Wait, so that story of you protecting the girl was made up?” Dinah asked.

     “Not all of it,” Rachelle replied, hunching her shoulders. “Those men were leering at her, and they could have been about to mistreat her. So I just made sure to walk between her and them. As protection.”

     “So . . . all you did was walk to work?”

Usually, you can connect a character’s actions to their dialog, as with Rachelle hunching her shoulders above. So if you have a character performing actions in the middle of dialog but they’re not speaking, it is often a good idea to give them their own paragraph as well.

     “I didn’t just walk to work! I put myself out there.”

     Dinah shook her head, rubbing her temples.

     “I was protecting the girl,” Rachelle continued. “I was stopping the problem before it could begin.”

     “It’s not a problem until it begins,” Dinah replied. “You protected her from a problem you made up. And now the police are out there looking to arrest a couple of men that didn’t actually commit a crime.”

     Rachelle somehow hunched her shoulders even further and folded her arms in a pose that Dinah could only describe as “petulant.”

The only easy exception to this rule that I can think of is if you are listing a few related bits of dialog in a row:

     Dinah sighed. This was partially her fault. She should have known better than to simply trust Rachelle on this issue. She thought back on the day before. “The way Rachelle sees things and the way things are ain’t usually very similar,” Bank had warned her. “Rachelle always wants to see herself as some sort of paragon instead of just regular folk like the rest of us,” Ginny had said. Why hadn’t she listened?

But that is something to be used sparingly. Most of the time, keep to the simple rule that when a new character begins speaking, a new paragraph should begin.

Making Movement Meaningful

Pure dialog can get confusing and even boring; it can also fail to convey the many subtleties that people communicate through means like expression and body language. This is the reason that writers often insert small actions into passages of dialog. The actions could be changes in a character’s expression, small movements or gestures, or specific tasks that the character is performing while they talk. For example:

     “I don’t think we should go after her,” Sofia whispered. She shifted in her seat and closed her eyes with a sigh.

     Matilde glanced at Sofia and then looked away. “Why not?”

    “She decided to leave all on her own. No one made her.” Sofia shook her head and bit her lip. “She obviously doesn’t want to be here.”

     “Maybe . . .” Matilde replied, looking down at her feet while she shuffled them back and forth. “But what happens when she decides she wants to be here after all and it’s too late for her to come back? Chiara tends to be pretty impulsive.”

     Sofia stuck out her tongue. “We still can’t force her to do what she doesn’t want to,” she said, waving her hands.

     Matilde looked up with a frown and then turned away again, wringing her hands. “We could. And maybe we should.”

Now, that passage was packed a little too full of actions—every single line of dialog was accompanied by at least one action. That’s partly because I wanted to fit as many examples as I could into one passage, but many people do write their conversation scenes this way.  But why is that too many actions? Am I saying that you should never have an action to accompany every line of dialog? No. The problem isn’t the number of actions so much as it is the lack of purpose behind so many of the actions.

Let’s list the actions from the passage again:

     shifted in her seat

     closed her eyes

     with a sigh

     glanced at Sofia

     and then looked away

     shook her head

     and bit her lip

     looking down at her feet

     shuffled [her feet] back and forth

     stuck out her tongue

     waving her hands

     looked up with a frown

     and then turned away again

     wringing her hands

What are each of these actions supposed to convey? Why is the character performing that particular action at that point in the conversation?  With some of these actions, the purpose is pretty clear. When someone closes their eyes and sighs, for instance, it’s usually a pretty good indication of weariness or irritation. Hand wringing and lip biting are decent ways to indicate nervousness or internal confliction. And frowns are pretty clear indications of unhappiness or severe confusion.

But even those examples could each have more than one meaning. As for the others, they don’t convey anything meaningful. What is the audience supposed to learn from the fact that Sofia “shifted in her seat”? Is the seat uncomfortable? Is she emotionally uncomfortable and the movement is a physical indication of that fact? Was she trying to relax or get a better view of something? There are so many reasons to shift in one’s seat that simply describing the action carries next to no meaning.

Why is it significant that Matilde looked at Sofia and then looked away? What does that mean? What does it mean that she’s looking down at her feet while shuffling them? Is her turning away after looking up with a frown supposed to tell us something about her thoughts? Because it isn’t. It might be vaguely sort-of hinting at some sort of emotional state, but it sure isn’t informing the audience of anything.

Even Sofia sticking out her tongue is confusing. There are so many ways and reasons that people stick out their tongues:

Each of these images conveys a different emotion, and yet they could all be described as someone “sticking out his or her tongue.” From the context, we could probably narrow down Sofia’s gesture to two or three of these, but it still wouldn’t be clear. Is she disgusted? Petulant? Nauseated? We just don’t know.  Remember—most expressions and movements can indicate more than one emotion, thought, or state of mind. Just because you know which meaning you were trying to convey doesn’t mean that your readers will get it.

“Looks” are probably the worst category of offenders on this front. Throughout the conversations I read, characters are “looking” all over the place. They look at one another, they look at their feet, at the wall, at the table, into the distance, into the sky, at their hands, at their clothes. And most of it doesn’t have any meaning whatsoever. Beware the meaningless look!

This usually happens when a writer can tell that the conversation needs a beat or a brief lull to break up the dialog, but they don’t have anything for the characters to do to provide that break. If you need a beat but you can’t think of a meaningful movement or expression for your character, then give them something to do! In our example above, Sofia could have been trying to finish some (plot-related) paperwork while they conversed or Matilde could have already begun packing to go after Chiara. The possibilities are endless.

Give your manuscript to a friend and ask them to highlight any point where the purpose of movements or expressions was unclear or confusing. If you can’t come up with a meaningful movement to replace the vague one, then don’t be afraid to cut it out entirely.

Characters With Multiple Names: Keeping It Consistent

Let's say that your main character has a friend named “James T. Mitchell, Jr.” His family calls him Jimmy, his mother calls him James, his grandparents call him Junior, and his friends call him Mitch.

Now, your audience probably has enough to do keeping track of the names of several different characters; if you try to make them remember more than one name for a single character, they’re going to have trouble. So if you have a character like this, consider pruning down the number of names you’ve given them. Ask yourself why this character has so many names and whether or not it actually adds anything to the plot or the character. If the answer is no, just cut down to one name.

But if you absolutely must have all of these names for James T. Mitchell, Jr., than you need to be consistent. Here's an example of too many names being handled poorly, patterned off of stories I've edited:

     Dan waved as Mitch came running out of the house.

     “James, you can’t leave until you finish your chores,” James’s mother shouted from the kitchen window.

     Mitch winced. “I can do them tonight, mom!” he shouted back. He grinned at Dan and gestured to the hole in the fence. Dan smiled and climbed through into the neighbor’s yard.

     “James Mitchell, don’t you dare leave!” James’s mother screamed. James ignored her. “James!”

     “Let’s go see if Sally is home,” Mitch said.

In the dialog of this example, Mitch was called by three different names—James, James Mitchell, and Mitch—and that's okay. What makes the passage confusing is that his name also alternates in the prose (that is, in the text that isn't dialog): he's Mitch in the first, third, and fifth paragraphs, but he's James in the second and fourth. This makes it seem as though two different characters are being referred to. Sure, your reader would probably figure out what was going on, but they shouldn't have to “figure out” something as simple as what character you're talking about.

The answer to this problem is to only refer to the character by one name in the prose. In our example above, Dan is our viewpoint character; and Dan thinks of James T. Mitchell, Jr. as "Mitch," just like the rest of their friends. So James T. Mitchell, Jr. will always be "Mitch" in the prose, even if his mother and family call him by other names in the dialog.

Done well:

     Dan waved as Mitch came running out of the house.

     “James, you can’t leave until you finish your chores,” Mitch’s mother shouted from the kitchen window.

      Mitch winced. “I can do them tonight, mom!” he shouted back. He grinned at Dan and gestured to the hole in the fence. Dan smiled and climbed through into the neighbor’s yard.

     “James Mitchell, don’t you dare leave!” Mitch’s mother screamed. Mitch ignored her. “James!”

     “Let’s go see if Sally is home,” Mitch said.

Note that this scene will still be confusing if we haven't already made it clear to our readers that people call Mitch by many different names; you can't just drop a character into the story and have everyone call him something different without explaining what's going on. If it seems like it would be difficult to fit in an explanation about Mitch's name before we introduce him, that's because it would be! That is one reason why I recommend against giving one character multiple names.

Now, if this story had multiple viewpoint characters, then we might be able to refer to Mitch by a different name in the prose. In sections written from Dan’s viewpoint, Mitch would always be “Mitch,” as we've discussed. But if you had sections written from Mitch’s mother’s point of view, you might switch to calling him "James," because that is how his mother thinks of him. But remember that you would be running the risk of needlessly confusing your readers. And either way, you must always be sure to keep each viewpoint consistent—when we’re in Dan’s head, Mitch is always “Mitch,” and when we’re in the mother’s view, Mitch is always “James.” Always.

Variety in Dialog Tags: What to Avoid

We discussed the two schools of thought on dialog tags last time; today we'll go over the kinds of dialog tags you should avoid. These fall into three classes: grandiloquent, repetitive, and non-dialog.

Grandiloquent

Grandiloquent means "overly high-minded, pompous, or pretentious, especially in language," and it is a condition that afflicts many new authors. My preferred term for this behavior is highfalutin. 

The amount of grandiloquence you employ should vary depending on what you're writing. If you're working on a very flowery, "literary" type of story, then you'll want to be a little more eloquent, as florid prose is a hallmark of that genre. In any other genre, however, you'll generally want to ensure that your prose calls as little attention to itself as possible—you want your readers to almost forget that they're reading and simply absorb the story, which they can't do if they have to stop and think over highfalutin language.

Here are some grandiloquent dialog tags that I often see crop up in novice writing:

"Dialog," he opined. < Just use said.

"Dialog," she queried. < asked, unless maybe the character is a computer.

"Dialog," I ruminated. < reflected, remembered, or recalled could all work here. 

"Dialog," it pontificated. < said, lectured.

"Dialog," John soliloquized. < said or reflected, depending on the context.

The line between being precise with your word choice and being too highfalutin is very fine—generally, I recommend leaning toward simpler language if you're ever in doubt.

Repetitive

Novice writers have a tendency to repeat themselves, and one way that they do this is often in dialog tags. Take a look at the following example:

"Welcome to the Nodsdown Fair!" the young woman greeted.

Here, the tag greeted is redundant—the dialog itself already made it very clear that the woman is greeting someone. The tag is only there to let us know who is speaking, so said would be more efficient here. Some other frequently-repetitive tags are cursed, pontificated, lectured, greeted, rambled, hinted, joked, agreed, elaborated, and explained.

Now, you might have noticed that some of those words can be found on my list of possible tags from the last post. Sometimes these words aren't redundant, and sometimes they are. It's an even finer line to walk than the grandiloquent line. Just be on the lookout for any redundant tags in your writing, and when in doubt—err on the side of simple.

Non-Dialog

The final type of dialog tag to avoid is tags that don't actually describe the manner in which the dialog was spoken. Take this example:

"I think I can do that," John smiled. "Give me the stick."

Smiled doesn't actually describe the dialog—you can't smile words. This kind of construction usually arises from writers who are trying to cut out extra words and go a little too far. Cutting out excess words is good, as long as the remaining words still accurately state what they're intended to. Our example can be rewritten in several ways:

With dialog tags:
"I think I can do that," John said, smiling. "Give me the stick."
"I think I can do that," John said with a smile. "Give me the stick."

Without dialog tags:
"I think I can do that." John smiled. "Give me the stick."
John smiled. "I think I can do that. Give me the stick."

Some other words that I often see used as tags which don't actually describe the dialog are: nodded, shrugged, blushed, snorted, and ground (as in "he said while grinding his teeth").

(I'll also mention laughed, coughed, scoffed, chuckled, gasped, sobbed, grunted, and cried. These can be acceptable, as they describe the sounds coming out of a character's mouth simultaneous to the dialog. No, we don't actually laugh words, but we can speak while laughing. But try to use these sparingly.)


I also want to place special emphasis on my personal, most-hated non-dialog dialog tags:

"Dan here couldn't hit a baseball if it was the size of a pumpkin!" Mike jabbed.
"Maybe I should practice with your head," Dan returned.

I hate "jabbed" and "returned." Don't use them, not ever. They fall into both the repetitive and the non-dialog categories; what's worse, they always tend to be attached to back-and-forth teasing that isn't nearly as clever as the author wants to believe it is. Please do not use these words as dialog tags.

P.S.

Many authors use the word sang to mean "shouted jubilantly." While this usage is not uncommon, it can be a little confusing; after all, it is possible to literally sing words. I recommend avoiding it.

Crowed can be used to mean the same thing, and I don't like it. There's nothing technically wrong with it; that's mostly just me.

Variety in Dialog Tags: Two Schools of Thought

In this post, I discussed how synonyms can be used to avoid repetition and to add variety to your prose, but I also cautioned that too many synonyms can make your writing seem forced and juvenile. Nowhere is the need for this caution more evident than in dialogue tags.

If you have a moment, go take a look at these two stories on Tor.com: "The President's Brain is Missing" by John Scalzi, and "Firstborn" by Brandon Sanderson. Pay particular attention to the dialog tags in each story.

There are two general attitudes towards using synonyms in your dialog tags. The first is exemplified in Scalzi's story: although the story contains more dialog than Brandon Sanderson's, you might have noticed that the variety of dialog tags Scalzi used is much narrower than the variety Sanderson used. Many authors and editors prefer to use only a very few, basic dialog tags and let the dialog itself convey any necessary tone or subtleties. These authors pretty much restrict themselves to eight or so dialog tags:

"Dialog," he said.
"Dialog," she asked.
"Dialog," I replied.
"Dialog," it answered.
"Dialog," John continued.
"Dialog," Mary shouted.
"Dialog," they yelled.
"Dialog," we whispered.

These eight tags can conceivably cover a good ninety-five percent of the speaking situations that you'll put your characters into. For many editors and authors, any more variety in dialog tags than this will seem overdone and irritating.

As long as you're doing your best to follow my advice from this post, you will never go wrong using the tags I've listed above. They may seem boring or overly common, but almost no editors will be bothered by them.

The second school of thought is a little more liberal when it comes to the variety of tags they use, preferring to pick more precise and nuanced words for any given situation. For instance, the very first dialog tag in "Firstborn" was commanded, which was not on our earlier list. Here are some other tags you might see in the work of an author who belongs to this second school of thought:

"Dialog," he exclaimed.
"Dialog," she shrieked.
"Dialog," I mused.
"Dialog," it teased.
"Dialog," John grunted.
"Dialog," Mary hissed.
"Dialog," they growled.
"Dialog," he interjected.
"Dialog," she wondered.
"Dialog," I rasped.
"Dialog," it grumbled.
"Dialog," John pleaded.
"Dialog," Mary begged.
"Dialog," they began.
"Dialog," we gasped.
"Dialog," he responded.
"Dialog," she insisted.
"Dialog," I interrupted.
"Dialog," it cut in.
"Dialog," John acknowledged.
"Dialog," Mary sighed.
"Dialog," they breathed.
"Dialog," we cried.
"Dialog," he sobbed.
"Dialog," she added.
"Dialog," I mumbled.
"Dialog," it murmured.
"Dialog," John warned.
"Dialog," Mary cautioned.
"Dialog," they announced.
"Dialog," we wailed.
"Dialog," he commanded.
"Dialog," she ordered.
"Dialog," I muttered.
"Dialog," it demanded.
"Dialog," John noted.
"Dialog," Mary whimpered.
"Dialog," they bellowed.
"Dialog," we boomed.
"Dialog," he admitted.
"Dialog," she screamed.
"Dialog," I called.
"Dialog," John groaned.
"Dialog," Mary moaned.
"Dialog," they explained.
"Dialog," we scoffed.
"Dialog," he suggested.
"Dialog," she agreed.
"Dialog," I snapped.
"Dialog," it hollered.
"Dialog," John conceded.
"Dialog," Mary elaborated.

If you lean more toward the second school of thought, here are some cautions you need to consider:

Don't overuse synonyms: Although "Firstborn" did contain a larger variety of dialog tags, the vast majority of the tags in the story still came from our first list of basic tags.  Don't try to find an unusual word for your tag when said or replied would work just fine.

Make sure the word you choose fits the dialog: I've read many a manuscript where new authors misuse words from this second list. For instance, a character who has just been scolded might grumble in response or mumble in response. Which one you choose should depend on the character's attitude. Grumble carries a hint of aggression, of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, while mumble is more submissive. So if your character is not angry about being scolded, they should not be grumbling in response. If you're not sure that the word fits the situation perfectly, don't use it.


Whether you lean towards the first or second school of thought, there are some categories of tags that you should always avoid. Read about them here.

Ellipses

Ellipses (or more properly, ellipsis points) are the three periods (...) used to indicate omission or hesitation in prose.

They can be formatted in several different ways. When indicating omission, you can have ellipses with no spaces (word...word); with spaces after and before the words but not within the ellipses (word ... word); or with spaces between each character (word . . . word). When indicating hesitation, you can have ellipses with a space after (word... word); or with spaces between each character (word . . . word). Personally, I strongly recommend ellipses with spaces (word . . . word).

In stories, ellipses are most often used to indicate hesitation in dialog. Some examples:

     "I think . . . that we should take the gorilla with us," Ben said.
     ". . . How are we going to fit it in the car?" Erin asked.
     "Well . . . we could maybe, um . . . well, no . . ."
     "No . . . ?"
     Ben shook his head. "No . . . I guess we can't take it with us."

Note that when ellipses are used to indicate hesitation at the beginning of the sentence (in the second line), the sentence still begins with a capital letter. When the ellipses indicate a question that has trailed off, they are followed by a question mark, as shown in the fourth line.

Ellipses aren't often used to indicate omission in stories; that's a use that tends to spring up more in academic writing, when quoting another author. However, on occasion, you might use ellipses in your story to indicate that illegible or indistinct words have been omitted:

     Ben squinted at the old note. The pencil had smeared or faded in places, leaving many of the words illegible. All he could make out was, "Diana . . . should have met . . . before I left. I . . . have seen you . . . to face."

     Erin pressed her ear to the door. Her manager and the strange woman were having a conversation, but she could only make out bits and pieces of the conversation.
     "I don't think . . . be here," her manager said.
     "It doesn't matter . . . think. She's . . . with me," the woman replied.

Things to look out for

Be consistent: You can format your ellipses with or without spaces; just make sure that you use the same formatting throughout your entire manuscript.

Avoid using ellipses outside of your dialog: The primary purpose of ellipses in dialog is to mimic the natural hesitations and pauses of human speech. You can also use them in your character's thoughts to similar effect. However, unless you're writing in first person, you should avoid using ellipses outside of dialog, as it will make your prose seem overly informal and disjointed.

Avoid over-using ellipses: Even in dialog, a large cluster of ellipses will distract your reader's eyes and interrupt the flow of the text. Look at each ellipses in your manuscript and ask yourself, what does this ellipses mean? Is it indicating a meaningful pause for thought or showing a character's discomfort? Is this pause really necessary?

Don't break up your ellipsis points: Your word processor will split lines of text at any available space. This means that you can sometimes have one or two ellipsis points at the end of one line and the remaining one or two points at the beginning of the next line. It's not really a mistake, but it sure doesn't look good. If you spot this happening, try putting some non-breaking spaces between the ellipsis points (usually in the menu under Insert > Insert Special Characters > Non-breaking Space). These will give you the proper spaces between the points without letting the processor split them up.

Using Actions to Avoid Dialog Tags

I told you here to avoid using any more dialog tags than you absolutely must. Here's another tip on how you can do that.

Often, your characters will be performing actions as they speak. For example:

"They can't have just disappeared," Jensen said. He peered at the dusty valley through his binoculars. "They're hiding out there someplace."

Having someone perform actions as they speak is natural and engaging—readers often have an easier time following dialog if they have a clear image of where the characters are and what they are doing while they speak. But having a character perform actions while they speak can serve another very useful purpose. Let's take another look at our previous example, but with the dialog tag removed:

"They can't have just disappeared." Jensen peered at the dusty valley through his binoculars. "They're hiding out there someplace."

See what just happened? Even though the text didn't explicitly state who was speaking, having Jensen perform an action in the middle of a line of dialog automatically implies that he was the one who spoke. This is one of the most useful tricks I know for avoiding dialog tags.

Look through your story for places where a dialog tag appears next to an action, and see if you can pare the text down to just the action. Sometimes you won't be able to—dialog tags can't always be avoided—but I bet you'll be able to cut out at least a few.

P.S.

As you're looking for places where you can apply this trick, keep an eye out for the words "as [he/she/they/it] spoke." New writers often use these words when they don't need to. Example:

The king took the sword and touched it to the shoulders of the knight as he spoke. “I dub thee Sir Gloudin of the Knights of the Broken Branch.”

Now, with the words "as he spoke" removed:

The king took the sword and touched it to the shoulders of the knight. “I dub thee Sir Gloudin of the Knights of the Broken Branch.”

If you place the dialogue immediately after a related action, readers will automatically fill in that the two are simultaneous. Neat!

Dialog Tags: When to Use

The noble dialog tag, always there to let your reader know who is speaking. "What do you want?" Jane said. 

Without tags, dialog can become a confusing jumble. But unfortunately, too many tags will render your dialog cluttered and annoying to read.  So how many is too many? Any more than the absolute minimum that is required for clarity.  Have some friends read through your dialog and highlight any spot where they were confused about who is speaking. If they were never confused, see if you can take a few tags out without causing confusion. Your goal should always be the smallest amount of tags that you can get away with.

If only two characters are conversing, you can usually skip quite a few tags without causing confusion, because of the back-and-forth pattern of conversation:

"When did you buy a porcupine?" Earl asked.

"Never said I bought it," Leo replied.

"What? You said you weren't going to steal any more!"

"Never said I stole it, neither."

Though the last two lines of this example had no tags, it was still clear who was speaking; Earl spoke first, so it was clear that he was speaking again after Leo. The final line was clearly Leo's, since he replied to Earl and there are only two characters in the scene.

If you have three or more characters in the scene, tags become more and more necessary to keep things clear—the more characters you have, the more tags you'll need.

For more tips on avoiding dialog tags, check out this post.

Dialog Tags: Periods vs. Commas

A dialog tag is the bit of prose that identifies who is speaking. Consider these two examples:

Example 1: "Eat some food," she said, pushing him toward the kitchen, "before you pass out."

Example 2: "Eat some food," she said, pushing him toward the kitchen. "I don't want you to pass out."

In example one, the dialog tag ends in a comma, while in example two, the tag ends with a period. Why?

Look at the dialog from example one without the tag: "Eat some food before you pass out." It is one complete sentence, and the tag was placed in the middle. When a dialog tag bisects a sentence, then it should end with a comma, to keep the sentence intact.

Example two, however, has a dialog tag between two complete sentences, so the tag ends with a period.

It is also worth noting that ending a dialog tag with a period is preferable whenever possible. Consider one more example:

Example 3: "Eat some food," she said, pushing him toward the kitchen. "Then get some rest."

This example could be written as one sentence in several different ways. "Eat some food, then get some rest," or "Eat some food; then get some rest," would both be as grammatically correct as "Eat some food. Then get some rest." But with a dialog tag, a period usually flows best, so go with it whenever you can.

Dialog Tags: Capitalization

A dialog tag is the bit of prose that identifies who is speaking. If the tag follows the dialog, it should begin with a lower-case letter, unless it is a title or name which is always capitalized. The punctuation of the dialog (i.e. whether the dialog ended in a comma, a question mark, or anything else) has no effect on capitalization.

Examples:

Incorrect:  “I’m doing fine,” She said.

Correct:    “I’m doing fine,” she said.

Incorrect:  “What do we do now?” The man said.

Correct:    “What do we do now?” the man said.

Incorrect:  “Hi there!” She said.

Correct:    “Hi there!” Sarah said.