Commas in dialogue | Punctuation | Grammar | Khan Academy Video Lecture | Complete Course on English Grammar: Upgrade your Speaking & Listening - Personal Skills

hello grammarians and hello Paige hi
David so we're going to talk about using
commas in dialogue so I've got these two
sentences here that I have removed all
the punctuation from because I recognize
that figuring out where to put commas
when you are reporting someone else's
speech you know for a newspaper article
or a piece of fiction or whatever it is
I can be quite confusing and so here's
basically what you need to know is that
commas and dialogue essentially function
as runways you can ramp you up to get
going for an utterance and take you down
and land page would you read me this
sentence
Guillermo said I have no idea where I
put that moonstone so we're starting
into this sentence and we're going to
use this comma as a ramp to divide
between the utterance and what's called
a dialog tag so Guillermo said comma I
have no idea where I put that moonstone
this is the end of his utterance we're
going to put a period here
however sentence number two they're
probably pirates Roxanne said so here
since we're putting the dialogue tag
after the reported speech this were
otherwise going to be a period we're
going to put a comma here the they're
probably pirates comma Roxanne said
period and why is this it's because
we're trying to separate between the
reported speech and the dialogue tag
itself so in the event that this were a
question however you would use a
question mark or if it were an
exclamation you'd use an exclamation
point but if it were going to just be a
period you wouldn't do this you wouldn't
say they're probably pirates period
Roxanne said you would say they're
probably pirates comma Roxanne said yeah
I know that's kind of confusing but that
is the style that we abide by in English
right so as you said comma with dialogue
is pretty much acting as a runway okay
so with the first sentence
Guillermo said
, so this is kind of like takeoff right
you're getting like ramped up into the
dialogue and then with the second one
it's like plane is landing and they're
probably pirates and then the dialogue
ends cool but there has to be a comma in
there to end it so if the statement
we're going to end with a period we'd
use a comma in rapport a dialogue when
the tag follows the reported speech
otherwise we'd use all the other
relevant punctuation marks yeah okay
cool so this is like the only time ever
when you can end a sentence with a comma
yeah pretty much
whoa that's awesome yeah so that's how
you use commas and dialogue you can
learn anything David out page out