[Grammar] Direct speech: "says Cindy quitely" OR "Cindy quietly says" ?

[EveJK]

Hi everyone,

I'm cofused about the correct way to express direct speech when there is a name involved.
I always see it written like this: (My current reference is a Harry Potter book.)

"That's not funny." says Cindy quietly.

Would it be also correct to write it like this?

"That's not funny." Cindy says quietly.

The second one sounds more natural to me, but I only see it used with name+verb if someone "yelled", "bellowed" or "shouted" something; so if it is a more intense exclamation. Like:

"No!" Cindy shouted.


Is there a rule to this? I can't find anything on it.

Also, I don't see any comma used there. In German you would put a comma after the closing quotation mark.
Is it normal, that it's not used in English or is it kind of "optional"?


Thank you for your help!
Eve

 

[emsr2d2]

Hi everyone,

I'm cofused about the correct way to express direct speech when there is a name involved.
I always see it written like this: (My current reference is a Harry Potter book.)

"That's not funny", says Cindy quietly.

Would it be also correct to write it like this?

"That's not funny", Cindy says quietly.

The second one sounds more natural to me, but I only see it used with name+verb if someone "yelled", "bellowed" or "shouted" something; so if it is a more intense exclamation. Like:

"No!" Cindy shouted.


Is there a rule [strike]to[/strike] for this? I can't find anything on it.

Also, I don't see any comma used there. In German, you would put a comma after the closing quotation mark.
Is it normal, that it's not used in English or is it kind of "optional"?

Thank you for your help!
Eve

As you can see from my punctuation change above, there should have been a comma. There certainly shouldn't have been a full stop inside the quotation marks.

Both "says Cindy quietly" and "Cindy says quietly" are OK. I might put a comma between "Cindy" and "quietly" in the first.

 

[EveJK]

As you can see from my punctuation change above, there should have been a comma. There certainly shouldn't have been a full stop inside the quotation marks.

Thanks for the fast reply!

That's really weird ...
I just looked at the book again and two other English novels I have. When the sentence ends with a full stop/question mark/exclamation mark, there is definitely no comma used.

"Good thinking!" said Ron.

Also, I just noticed for the first time, that sometimes the sentence itself ends with a comma (before) the closing quotation mark.

"Nicely done Hermione, " said Ron.

This kind of punctuation is used a lot. In all of the books. Sometimes the person starts talking again after that. But most times, this will be a complete senctence and not just part of it.


So technically the books don't use the correct punctuation?! :-D

I just need a guide on how to do it, because I'm translating a story of mine into English and I want to do it right.

 

[emsr2d2]

An exclamation mark or question mark can appear inside the quotation marks because they are an integral part of the sentence/question - they actually denote meaning. A full stop is used only at the very end of a sentence so would only appear inside the quotation marks if there are no more words to come.

He said "I don't live here." After that, he left.
He said "I don't live here" and then he left.

Whether a comma appears inside or outside the quotation marks is frequently a question of style and can differ from country to country. AmE and BrE have some quite different punctuation rules.

 

[EveJK]

I looked at a few more examples in the books with your explanation in mind and I think I'm slowly getting it.
We normally get the British versions here, so the ones I have all use the same punctuation.

I never had to write that much direct speech in English before, so I'm quite surprised how complicated the rules can be, compared to my native language

Thanks again for your quick reply!

 

[GoesStation]

In typical American usage, we replace the period with a comma when a quoted sentence that ends with a period is embedded in another sentence. For example, ​"Punctuation rules can be complicated," he said.