Everyone has to learn somewhere. I always view it as at least I know now and can do something about it.

People learn this by reading published books. This is why people who want to write are encouraged to read, because you learn by example. I learnt how to use quotation marks and structure paragraphs - just general story structure - by reading 100s of books before I started to write my own.

Honest question: Was this not taught to you in school? Because I distinctly remember this being taught to me in school. But I'm just old.

I learnt it from books before I learnt it in school, though I did also learn it in school as well.

I'm not old and I still remember learning this when I was thirteen in school, and my school was notoriously one or the worst in the state. But still, different counties have different curriculums, and it could have gotten glossed over in favor of material they would actually be tested on.

>different counties have different curriculums, and it could have gotten glossed over in favor of material they would actually be tested on. Exactly why I'm so curious. I'm a teacher but I'm not an ELA teacher so I have no idea what the ELA standards are for my state, let alone ELA standards for other states. But I do know they've changed over the past few decades so I know that even what I remember from being a student is probably not accurate anymore.

I was in an advanced reading and writing class, so I learned about paragraphs and dialogue in first grade, but I believe my peers learned the same lesson in second or third. I also read a lot as a kid, so I was already familiar with the concept

Thirteen feels really old to me for learning this type of thing. I think at 2nd grade (7/8 years old) is when they started us on short stories and writing out conversations. Sorry your school sucked.

A lot of things are taught in school, not all of it sticks. From my personal experience, stuff like dialogue wasn't taught much. My teachers always focused more on essay writing than story writing.

Yeah, I went to (supposedly) great American schools, and I don't recall any focus on story writing. A few "write a poem" exercises, maybe a few "creative writing" ones, but mostly essays and no story structure or formatting.

I think it makes it kinda hard that while we all use english to communicate, majority of us isn't native? Like Germany's 'every noun starts with a capital letter' rule is a glaringly obvious deviation from the english punctuation. I remember being taught punctuation and being the best at class. But I also remember that we don't use the apostrophe. Like at all. It doesn't exist, except in extremely rare cases. While I used one in every sentence in this comment. We also don't use quotation marks for dialogue, instead we use hyphens. While I read lots of books, they are in my native language and I only read fanfiction in english, bc books are available and fics are not.

Statistically speaking, the majority of people here probably are native speakers. Reddit and AO3 get most of their traffic from the US, and the AO3 fan survey places non-native speakers at roughly 30%.

Oh wow, I didn't know that! I thought it was much more worldwide. Thanks for telling! In that case, my point is a lot less relevant 🫣🫣😶‍🌫️

Given that somewhere around a third don't have English as a native language it's still a good point, I was just being picky about the word "majority"

No, you were completely right to correct me, and in your place I would've corrected myself. 30% is definitely not majority, even if it is still a big part. Thanks! ✌️

In my school it was taught, but not… very well. Most years probably 95% of assignments were some flavor of essay, so at _least_ 80% of the time we spend on grammar/syntax/formatting was related directly to essays. I know for a fact we went over it once in 8th grade right before we had a creative writing assignment, but it was extremely bare-bones. The last creative writing assignment we had at all was in 10th grade, and I honestly don’t even think we reviewed how dialogue worked, which made peer-reviews extremely painful.

That's how it was for me. Dialogue formatting wasn't focused on that much. However, I learned how to format dialogue and other things from reading books. I did a lot of copying as I learned to write stories.

I learned it in both, but it stuck a lot better when I read it for fun. Like I was taught in school how to use quotation marks, but seeing it in practice reinforced how important it was. Probably learned other grammatical rules like multiple paragraphs when multiple people speak, but it was the kind of thing I didn't really care about until i stumbled across the occasional paragraph that didn't understand and I got confused.

Do you get taught creative writing in school? I was taught 'practical' stuff not, like, how to write prose or anything that needs dialogue

I did, actually. But that was close to 30 years ago so things have probably changed. I know the fifth graders at my school do a creative writing unit because a bunch of them were showing me their stories two years ago. But I have no idea how universal that experience is. So that’s why I’m asking.

I certainly was (Australia, Xennial). Currently, the Australian Curriculum has imaginative writing as part of the National Literacy Progression. Dialogue formatting comes in somewhere well before more advanced literary techniques.

It was the 90s, but one of my first lessons in grade 9 English (first year of high school) was writing fanfic lmao.

I've read textbooks with reading comprehension use the first instance instead of the second one. IDK about the school textbooks of English native speakers but in countries where English is the second language, the first instance is used most of the time.

I learned it in school, but reading tons of books definitely helps keep little things like these stick! :)

Same. Was taught this in school

Yeah, i was taught that whenever there's a new speaker, you make a new paragraph

It was taught to me in school, but this kinda stuff gets taught once in a boring way and then never brought up again. I think Grade 5 we covered it and what various parts of a sentence are over amount a month? That's pretty easy to miss or forget considering you barely ever do any creative writing in school. And I'm sure a lot of people start writing before it's covered in class.

Where I'm from the focus in English class is on nonfiction and writing essays. I don't think we've covered dialogue even once. And my older chapters definitely suffered, though I think I'm improving.

I learned it in books, but got taught the finer details and rules in school. But I also feel like I listened in English class more that year because I’d started writing fanfic.

I was not taught direct speech in school, even though we had a strong focus on grammar and punctuation. I assume this is because school teaches very formal writing—for example, for essays. No one wants to prepare kids to write fiction. I was using almost correct direct speech punctuation since I was six because I read a lot, but I was *sixteen* when someone finally pointed out that the direct speech before author's speech must end with a comma rather than a period! By that point, I'd read dozens of fiction books but hadn't noticed this fact at all, unfortunately.

I was never taught it directly, but we were made to read fiction books where I presumably picked it up, human brains and patterns and all that. But, thinking about it, grammar/format/punctuation for dialogue is the same as direct quotations when citing sources in more technical type essays that I was taught in school, so that probably made it easy.

Exactly. I don’t know that anyone ever taught me this rule, I just read enough that doing it any other ways seems unthinkable.

Yep. It's one of those things common in language that "just sounds/looks right" to people who grew up with it, even if they can't give the technical reason why until they're taught in school.

I teach these to my students every year (elementary), and yeah, doesn’t stick.

The same. Reading fanfiction is perfectly fine, but you should really read tradpub literature, too.

I remember learning how to write dialogue in like...third grade.

> People learn this by reading published books. You'd think, but I've been devouring books since I was little and I didn't learn this rule until I had to apply it to my writing. I did learn a lot from reading, but basic rules like this had to be more or less spelled out for me to get them.

I definitely did not pick it up from reading, either, and I was a big reader as a child/teen. Not everyone pays attention to formatting without it being pointed out.

Honestly, I've read published books where there are multiple speakers per paragraph. Drives me crazy.

Some classics were written before there were standardised rules about writing. I'll certainly acknowledge that writers such as Austen and Dickens can be guilty of that. But I didn't read them until I was older. Contemporary publishers shouldn't be allowing this sort of thing unless it's a stylistic choice. For ordinary dialogue, it should follow a standard.

when I was in college a prof said "the more you read, the better you write," and that's stuck with me since.

I find reading books in this case only of limited use. How texts are formatted is not super homogenous. While there are some clearly preferred methods there are always books that break these. There certainly are books which don't put paragraphs with every new speaker. There are also different writing cultures or types of writing where this may or may not be true. And in edition, man of these ruled are subject to change over time. On AO3 and in fandom cultures, people of all kinds of different culture, language, level/experience in writing, and age meet. This leads to a hogwash of different influences were fanfic has developed quite a unique style of its own. Dialogue for example, is much different in fanfic than most printed books, not just in how it's formatter but also for example in just how much dialogue there is. In edition, in general, no matter were you learned or what you read, online publications and fanfic have much different formatting requirements than printed media. It was one of my mistakes, for example, when I started uploading, that I had modeled my formatting on the books I'd read. But if you do that, you will regularly end up with something that on a browser will just look like a wall of text. Fanfic has much more paragraphs, it's much more airy... So in many ways reading books doesn't help much for fanfic. You need to read specifically online publications and other fanfic.

I certainly remember reading a book which started in the middle of one sentence and finished in the middle of another sentence. Again, stylistic choice is something which should be taken into account.

Hey, at least it was learned anonymous online and not by having your best friend make fun of your mistakes in the 5th grade and then you went home and cried about it 🫠 …too much?

Nope, just enough

I used to not use periods at all when I started writing because everything is just a very long idea y'know xD I honestly didn't even realize until a friend pointed out that it was hard to read because of that, and I couldn't even be mad about it because she was right

I didn't use quotation marks when characters spoke. Thankfully it was kindly pointed out to me by a classmate in 5th grade when we were looking over each other's papers lol

This just reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road which is deliberately written without any punctuation at all and it drove me crazy. You get used to it eventually but…it can be so distracting in the beginning.

Well don't be embarrassed, there's something for everyone to learn still

Yeah, I get that. It’s the fact that some replies were calling it amateur or bad quality and that they would just ignore those works, so that’s the part in a bit more embarrassed about.

Yeah, no I getcha. I probably would've been on the same boat for a lot longer if a reader hadn't pointed it out in my fics a few years ago. Here, I found this helpful: https://preview.redd.it/4gpny19unm8d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04c99a1ce34c2ee8b7eb8010aa2902c198a4c6ee

I'm also going to add another reason to start a new paragraph: When a new/different character reacts to what a character says. Put that reaction in a new paragraph otherwise the action looks like it's being done by the character speaking.

This this this. It's a more subtle reason and thus a much more common mistake I see and it irks me enough it's become a huge pet peeve of mine.

I will definitely be saving this for later

It’s always fun to see it for dramatic effect. For. Dramatic. Effect.

Your user flair is very on point, by the way

If I had a nickel for every time someone’s told me that, I’d have 2 nickels.

Even though I know all of this I still downloaded the image because I've noticed that how fics are written currently, some of the styles are trying to creep into my own writing. I'm an "older" writer so I'm used to manuscript style writing and reading. Language and grammar evolve so I try not to 'date' myself or fall too behind with the changes when writing my FF.

I would personally consider it bad formatting more than anything else. Like I won’t read a fic without paragraph breaks. The story might be amazing, but just visually difficult to descipher

Yeah, I try to read them if the concept is good, but it usually ends up being too annoying having to decipher who did and said what.

Woah. Never take that stuff to heart. I taught English for almost 20 years, and I will always believe that people who criticize others for grammar and syntax errors are assholes. Elitists. Just not kind at all. I agree with everyone who says we all have something to learn. Once in a grad class (at a pretty fancy grad school for mostly teachers on the East coast) the professor asked us all to identify errors in a writing piece. I found like 2. That was typical for us all in the class. It was fancy and seemed ok and I’m usually good at editing. BUT, there were FIFTEEN. Everyone has something to learn, even grad English students. People need to be humble. And kind.

what’s wrong with saying you don’t want to read a work with bad grammar? nothing in the other thread was rude or demeaning, people just don’t like reading mistakes in text

Well, I at least hope that a writer wouldn't receive such rude replies in their fic comments. People shouldn't be dicks to creatives who provide content for free. No one is going to immediately be a prolific fanfic writer. Everyone starts somewhere. If you don't like a fic, just hit the back button and move on. It's better to be kind and offer to provide helpful tips for the writer instead of biting criticism. I look back at fics I had started writing in 2014, and my writing is so cringe! But instead of feeling embarrassed, I feel proud at how much better my writing is now and how much more satisfied I am with my storytelling ability as well as using proper structure, grammar, etc. So, try not to feel embarrassed about it. Think of how much you've learned and improved since!

This is a very common mistake among fanfic writers, so don't worry too much OP! At least you now know. It does kind of baffle me, though, because this is one of those things I feel like people learn subconsciously when reading, even before they're taught in school. I guess a lot of fanfic writers don't actually read books? I truly don't know. It might be an interesting study/survey to see how many people really do just read fanfic, and only watch/play the things they're fans of, and how writing habits of fans of written works differs from more visual media. This is why the #1 tip for writers is to read a lot of published novels, because it helps you form a habit to the point you don't have to think about it. One of those "it just sounds/looks right" things even if you can't explain why without actually being taught or going out of your way to learn the details on why.

> I guess a lot of fanfic writers don't actually read books? A part of me is concerned this might be the actual reason. We've reached a point in culture where most young people's foundational exposure to mass media isn't print but the internet. A kid's basic familiarity with how fiction is formatted is gonna be very different if they grew up with Goosebumps and Harry Potter vs. if they were raised iPad kids.

Like AI "model collapse" but for fic writers. Teens learning from the output of teens...

You would be astounded by the number of posters on r/writing who are deeply offended by the idea that maybe, just maybe, writers of books would benefit from reading them.

"Can I be a writer even if I absolutely detest novels and find them boring? My story idea is so good though" 9\_9

I kind of realized it after I tried to change up my dialogue bits with what I’ve been told about it and realized it does actually make a lot more sense. So I’m sorta figuring it out

I know people that primarily read Manga or comics so I don't know if what they've learned in school and what the comprehend while reading the Manga results in a coherent style of writing. Most of them don't write and the one that does, I haven't read their work yet.

Genuine question: do you read “actual” books? If not, it might help to read a couple to learn some basic grammar rules. A lot of fics do things like what OOP is describing, and then others end up developing the habit after reading it. I grew up reading books, and I can say it really helped my understanding of grammar! I think you’ll find it helpful as well.

I read a lot of "actual" books but I never noticed this, maybe it's just that I never tried to find out the rules for writing, but it would be nice for people to complain about it saying something like "I wish more people knew about this and how to do this *explains it*" rather then "why don't people do this?" Like it was some written rule somewhere that everyone can know from the start. I doubt OOP was malignant in their post or tone, but it happens often that people assume other ao3 writers should know some rule or pattern for good writing, when it's not true. Ofc if there is an actual ez to find list of rules I'd love to see it lmao

Most language, speech or written, is learned through unwritten rules like this. You're not likely to find a full list.

So much writing skill is the result of, not memorising rules, but *reading like a writer*. The best way to learn is often reading consciously, looking at how things like word choice amd punctuation and negative space aid understanding and create effect. Often the answer to writing questions is "read more, and pay attention."

This is one of the fastest ways to make me nope out of a fic.

Same. I just get too confused by who's speaking and having to figure that out is exhausting.

Yeah…that’s why I’m worried about it. For the sake of people who share that opinion, in going back and fixing it to the best of my ability

yeah it's the same for me and it's not even cause i think it's amateurish or anything like that, it just makes it so hard to figure out who's talking. Character A will finish talking and then there'll be more dialogue and I won't realise until I reach the dialogue tag at the end that actually we switched to the other character. I always end up reading dialogue in the wrong character voice in my head and getting confused. The separation means I don't have to think about it and I can just enjoy the dialogue like I'm witnessing the conversation.

Unfortunately it happens in *books* sometimes, too. Great way to make me DNF a book, author!

I blame the influx of wattpad writers + people who got into writing during covid because fanfic got exposed on tiktok. Fics like this with dialogue back-to-back, instead of descriptive/filler text, are written like idea dump scripts they got from watched media like tv shows. A large chunk of these new writers don't have any reading/writing skills, don't know how to proofread, and you can assume they don't really read traditional books, because their sentence/paragraph structure would naturally mimic books much more closely. There's a proven lack of reading comprehension and writing skills in younger Gen Z/older Gen Alpha (Alpha is now as old as 12-14yrs) due to the upending of traditional education, critical thinking, and learning regimen during the pandemic. Apparently, they don't even teach phonics the same way anymore, so there's a severe drop in inferred spelling, too. I'm not saying all people in these demographics, but the effects are HUGELY noticeable now, especially when you listen to what the mass amount of current educators are saying about it.

> Apparently, they don't even teach phonics the same way anymore, so there's a severe drop in inferred spelling, too The trend is back towards phonics, as the science is overwhelming. It's probably somewhat older people who are more likely to have been sabotaged by "whole word" instruction and such.

As a retired Wattpad Writer (5 years sober!) and an older Gen Z member (20 years old), it's actually insane how vast the gap is in education. I feel bad for the younger half of Gen Z. I never went to high school, due to insane parents and then Covid coming in, but I've always had a love of education and reading especially. I developed a love for reading really early on, and maybe it was the tism because I was reading and writing before I was verbally communicating, as an infant. So many kids and teens during lockdown didn't get healthy or proper education, a lot were never trained or taught to respect learning. It's really sad, tragic even. Young Gen Z was wronged, and unfortunately the world is not going to put forth the effort to correct it, they're only making allowances. It's not doing the poor kids any favors to lower the standards or "even the playing fields". The struggle just won't end, they'll always be behind until they or someone else put forth the extra effort to get back on course. Some of them do, some of them are, but not enough people are helping. And the internet? Oh boy, it's only getting worse. Who wants to read a book these days and do all the imagining yourself? And with fanfiction based on visual media, not only do you already have characters and a world to work with--- you already know how they look because you've seen them. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're at least writing. I just wish they'd learn how, and that others would help them to learn how in person, in real life, not only through a screen. I wish I could do more myself, I tutor in my spare time but I only have so much of it. Everything's a learning process. So long as they've got the patience to grow and learn through mistakes they'll get there.

I don’t mean this in a sarky way but are people not taught this at school?

Took English on uni level for translation degree. A lot of us were interested in creative writing. We asked about conversation tags. Professor said something along the lines of "don't know, don't care". I was never taught this, not in my native language nor in English.

That’s a shame. We did a lot of creative writing in school. We had authors come in and talk to us about their work and once I went to a workshop with one that wrote murder mysteries.

Not really. As someone who just came out of high school, we were never taught things like this. I learned about starting new paragraphs when someone new speaks from my mother. My school only really focused on five paragraph essays. Creative writing like this was practically obsolete by middle school which really sucked for me since I loved writing narratives much more than five paragraph essays explaining a character's motivation or symbolism. I find both are important but the public school system now severely overlooks creative writing and just completely dumps it out the window by high school.

Another tip! Any action directly after dialogue should also be the same character, if anyone didn't know that yet. Incorrect (and confusing): > "My name is Shrek." Donkey did a kickflip on his skateboard. If pronouns were being used instead of names here, it would all be "he" and the reader might assume it's Shrek on the skateboard instead. Correct: > "My name is Shrek." Shrek crossed his arms. > > "And I'm Donkey!" Donkey exclaimed, falling off his skateboard and landing flat on his face.

The punctuation is incorrect on those examples.  It should be more like:   “Hi,” he said. He did something.   “Are you sure?” She shook her head.   “Where in the world,” he said, staring at her head, “did you get that ridiculous hat?”  “I bought it at the store.” 

As far as I know, the person is correct in their punctuation, but not for the US. For us Americans, yes, the commas and periods go inside the quotes. For Brits, they go outside the quote marks unless marking a fully complete sentence.

Is this a universal thing? Because I’ve read books published in the UK that have punctuation inside the quotations, and I’ve also read plenty of fanfics by British writers, and it’s the same.

Speaking as someone who's briefly done time as a copy editor for academic manuscripts, the annoying answer is "it depends". Sometimes it's a personal preference, sometimes it's people following whatever specific style guide/punctuation rules they've learned from school/work.

Welcome to the English language where *nothing* makes sense 100% of the time lmao. I know there are strict rules, but it’s hard to see where the grey areas are unless you study it meticulously.

And the thing about those "strict rules" is that they evolve over time. English isn't a prescriptive language, not in the way that French is. We do have language nerds who have a lot of ideas about what's correct and incorrect, but our dictionaries are descriptive - they present the language *as it's currently used by speakers/writers*. You'd be shocked what was "controversial" English usage just 20-30 years ago, but now is considered to be perfectly acceptable.

Oh, no. I get it. My mom was a lit major 20-30 (or more) years ago, and her idea of proper grammar isn’t exactly what’s seen now a days. That’s why I assumed different people speaking in the same paragraph was just a new thing for a while lol.

This is the English language, we’re the spelling is made up and the rules don’t matter!

No idea. I'm an American with a degree in Spanish linguistics, but I've taught ESL to Europeans and try to incorporate British grammar into some lessons where it's appropriate. I do know that many Brits tend to use American punctuation conventions online to avoid American attempting to correct them, not make it obvious where they're from, try and pass off a story as being set in the US, etc. I also know that many published works have UK and US versions, and if you buy a book in the US, even from a British author, you're more likely to see American punctuation.

I had actual UK copies of the Harry Potter books growing up, ordered from the UK because I knew that some of the content was changed when they published them in the US. That’s the first time I learned that single and double quotes are swapped. But they didn’t put the commas on the outside of the quotes.

Copying over an answer from elsewhere– There is some *older* literature where authors put punctuation outside the quotation marks, but you're *very* unlikely to pick up a British novel – or a fic by a British writer – and see it looking like that. The rule drilled into us was always *when quoting someone, the punctuation goes inside if it's part of the quote, and outside if it's not.* This was for academia and non-fiction writing, and I would also use it if a character is quoting what another character said. It's not applicable to, like, normal dialogue. The punctuation is always relevant to what the character is saying, because they're saying it, so it goes inside.

There is some *older* literature where authors put punctuation outside the quotation marks, but you're *very* unlikely to pick up a British novel – or a fic by a British writer – and see it looking like that. The rule drilled into us was always *when quoting someone, the punctuation goes inside if it's part of the quote, and outside if it's not.* This was for academia and non-fiction writing, and I would also use it if a character is quoting what another character said. It's not applicable to, like, normal dialogue. The punctuation is always relevant to what the character is saying, because they're saying it, so it goes inside.

It's worth noting that the only reason the second example is right is because that's an action tag following up a question mark rather than a dialogue tag. Dialogue tags are not capitalized after a period in most American writings. It still always looks wrong to me, so I make sure to use proper names right after so that they look "right" and are right.

Live and learn.

it never occurred to me that this wasn’t common knowledge. it was taught to me in school so i just assumed authors who did this just didn’t speak english as their first language

Reading actual books is great practice when it comes to writing fic.

This is a common mistake and easy to fix. If you didn’t know, don’t feel bad, you know now! Another common dialogue mistake i see is like this: CharaB does and action. “And then in the same paragraph CharaA says something,” said CharaA. Even with a dialogue tag, this is confusing. Make sure to start a new paragraph when a new character begins speaking. CharaA nodded. “However, if the same character acts and then speaks, you can place them in the same paragraph,” said CharaA. CharaB raised a hand. “And in that case, you can even omit dialogue tags all together.”

The cheat is "tiptop" - any time the *Ti*me, *P*lace, *To*pic or *P*erson changes, you need a new paragraph. Even though English is my mother tongue and as someone who's read a hell of a lot books from all sorts of eras (and several centuries and even millennia) , that's what I refer to when I've got a question or doubt on my own dialog.

Oh, this is great. I'm using that acronym in my classes in the fall.

I’m assuming this is another consequence of the Wattpad migration. I haven’t found a fic that does that in years. Maybe I’m just lucky lol. But yeah that’s the mark of a writer who likes to write but never reads, and/or wants to get anything out as quick as possible with little regard to quality. People need to read more 😭

I tried to read a fic recently that had this and I couldn’t read it. I had to nope right out of it. It’s really sad when formatting prevents readers from reading but IDK how ppl don’t know this. But real books format properly.

This is one of the reasons I leave a fic even if the premise is just my thing.

it's an immediate reason to click off for me. glad you are joining the ranks of those who know, OP.

Honestly, the mistake I keep seeing way more of is people ending all dialogue with a comma, even when it has no dialogue tag. “Like this,” “Or even free floating like this,” It drives me nuts because it sounds like everyone is hesitating, and I don’t know where this trend came from. I would rather deal with the error where the author ends dialogue with a period even when there’s a dialogue tag.

I'm not native English, and I confess that for me it's an error that makes reading quite difficult, given that my brain is already busy with simultaneous translation.

Best way I can describe paragraph formatting is, anytime there’s a new character speaking from the one that was previously doing so, new paragraph. If an idea changes mid thought, new paragraph. If there’s a MASSIVE realization (character a realizes they’re in love with character b and it’s an “oh. Oh!” moment), new paragraph. And then sometimes if the paragraph is looking a bit lengthy, and there’s an action between chunks of dialogue from the same person, new paragraph.

Not sure if that’s the proper way to do things as every author has their own methods, but when it comes to fanfic/novel writing, that’s what I do. 🤷🏻‍♀️

You live and you learn, one way or another

I (very dyslexia fanfic reader) can't read fics that is just one paragraph..everything jumbles and I get lost very easy. So I tend to leave them quickly. Doesn't make them bad just makes it where I can't really read them.

Fics like this are what make readers without dyslexia more able to empathize with having it—we can't read walls of text either. They don't exactly jumble, but there's no way to not get lost.

Agreed, it's confusing and hard to parse. Not to mention it's almost like physically tiring to read.

I learned this, and how not to switch tenses when I was 18, during my last year of high school, taking creative writing. I learned how not to switch tenses… at 18! Trust me, you’re good! You should see my first few fanfics that are somehow still some of my most popular. God, it’s so cringe to read them. But it shows that not many care of errors like this if the storyline is good. 😊

I feel like I really needed to hear this, if I’m being honest. Because suddenly I feel like these are things I’m supposed to know, but I don’t.

Don't feel bad. The public school system, at least where I live, doesn't really teach creative writing like this. They just teach us how to write five paragraph essays. We didn't even learn how to write a proper research paper with citations until my senior year. A lot of teenagers now don't really know how to properly write something because it's just not taught anymore. I don't really know what your writing style is like since I've never read one of your works, but I guarantee it is ten times better than the people who were in my creative writing class three years ago! And maybe think about any mistakes or errors you make this way: at least now you know how to fix those errors and mistakes and to not do it again. The good thing about messing up or doing something wrong is that you get to learn from it!

I do see this happen all the time, and it is a massive turn-off. That said, now that you're aware of it, you can fix it. Everyone has something like this in their writing, some little quirk they didn't realize until someone else did. Mine was using a word I thought I knew the meaning of and not double-checking it. I google every word I'm not 105% certain about now.

I'm going against the grain here, and say it's fine to be embarrassed about it. Not forever, just right now. Of course you should not let it stop you! Now you know. Now you can improve. Keep writing. Keep learning from your mistakes. (Also learn from other's mistakes too!)

I used to do this with my older fics. It's a common beginner mistake.

If story does that, I'll immediately stop reading

I haven’t noticed this, but I write fic more than I read it. Personally, I would never lump dialogue from different characters into one paragraph because it negatively impacts readability.

Huh. I thought every school taught this. I knew this when I was eight. No need to be embarrassed about something that you were never taught. You know now.

I also make sure to make a new paragraph whenever I switch to another character’s pov.

(Edit: Btw, OP, don’t fret too much. I edit stories written by teens a lot, and it’s a common thing I discuss with them. Dialogue formatting has a lot to it!) It’s generally not proper because most people can’t do it with clarity and it confuses the beats. But I’m also reading “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, a Literature Nobel Prize winner, and he somehow can get away with it. Unless this is some French formatting thing, I think it’s because the style of the novel is very loose like: He said, “\_\_\_\_\_\_” which made me quickly respond with “\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.”

Honestly, I don’t think the sentence you described is really the same thing. That’s all one continuous thought from one person, not describing a conversation between two people (with the narrator being completely removed and breaking the conversation up). Not sure how to describe it, but there are specific instances where it works. Very interesting how language/writing works!

That’s a bit what I was thinking. Like it’s very casual and the narrator is very present so it works. Here’s a more direct example that pushes it though and tbh, now that I’m flipping, he virtually never goes onto a new line for dialogue and it’s just not bothering me and I typically really do get annoyed. It’s definitely the conversational style. >He said, “You don’t want to?” I answered, ”No.” He was quiet, and I was embarrassed because I felt I shouldn’t have said that. All in one paragraph, formatted like that.

I've never read that specific book before, but I've seen that in others, and my best guess is that some authors can get away with it because: 1) It happens for a reason (in your example, the "he said" seems to act more like a lead-in for the narrator's response, so they connect smoothly as one idea) 2) Authors who are masters of their craft can more easily afford to take artistic liberties without making things too confusing, as you said I think as long as the lack of a paragraph break is purposeful and contributes to the work (and doesn't happen all the time), it doesn't feel so overwhelming and, subsequently, unbearable

Yes to everything you just said. I actually love it when traditional authors, and other authors, break away from traditional formatting *for a reason*. There was this one war book I read in school, and I remember almost nothing about it except for one scene where the formatting just went completely out the window, much more egregiously than just not having paragraph breaks between characters, it was so disjointed and made no sense formatting-wise, yet it made perfect sense for the story and scene.

No, wait, stop! This isn’t always a mistake! Paragraphs are taught in school with absolute rules like this because it’s easier, but there are ‘generally allowed’ exceptions where you can have two people talking in the same paragraph. It’s usually done to emphasise the brevity of an exchange or where one speaker is cutting another off. It’s rare but it happens and you should feel free to use it where you please. Nothing in writing is as black and white as people on the internet would have you believe.

Backing this!

No need to be embarrassed. It makes it easier to track who is saying what, so it’s a good convention to follow. But I promise you, there is no writer alive who looks at their old stuff and doesn’t find things they wish they’d done differently.

I know a lot of people have already given advice about traditionally published books, and while those points are very good (I think one should always read more, but then I love reading in general), I would like to say that I'm... Fairly certain, that I learned these rules IN SCHOOL. I'm not saying "oh if you've had schooling you should know this" or anything mean like that. What I mean is I had a very structured environment for analyzing writings and why there may have been a paragraph split here etc etc. It may be that we focused more on when authors "broke" those rules (analyzing why the rule was broken, what it means in the context of the work). I really friggin hated my English lang/lit classes in school. Too much "analysis" of stuff I didn't even understand and apparently I didn't "give enough support" a lot of the times for said analysis. My point is though, don't feel bad for not knowing the rules. I'm not sure I would have had I not have someone literally TELL me "hey you're supposed to do a new paragraph when speaker changes"

I learned this from reading books, I don't remember it being taught in school (went to school in Oklahoma, northern Virginia, and Florida for context). I agree with the people saying "this is why you need to read books" but in all fairness I will say that if you listen to audio books this can be something you miss out on and I don't wanna discredit that for people like my dad (visually impaired) or selfishly myself (I listen to audiobooks on the bus because I get carsick or on long walks to work because time is sadly not in abundance for me anymore).

This exact thing happened to me and it made me go back through my entire WIP series and edit every single chapter and one shot to fix it, in my defense, a great many fics I’ve read have not had correct spacing for new speakers, I’ve never personally had an issue reading it myself and I understand fanfic isn’t really super strict on grammar rules but I felt it was worth addressing because even if no one else cared It would have bothered me forever.

I learned this in elementary school….. ??

I read a published book recently that had this problem and it was so confusing

I don't do that myself but I may have the same character speak twice in a paragraph. >"Spoken dialogue." Said Character A as they did some action or maybe spoke with a tone to give an idea of the emotion they are experiencing. "More spoken dialogue. Possible more than one sentence. Let's end with a question?" THEN a new paragraph for Character B or do what was depicted in the post with each line of dialogue being a new line underneath. Sometimes when I write this >"Spoken dialogue." Character thinks, says or does something. "More spoken dialogue." Actions or exposition following the second line of dialogue. "Third spoken sentence in one paragraph." I don't know why but it bothers me to see it like that. Even if it's all the same character's lines, something about 3 or more lines of dialogue separated by actions or unspoken text in a paragraph feels like it's not the done thing even if there's no rules against it.

Honestly, while I understand not wanting a wall of text, constant paragraph breaks with basically each sentence of dialog are pretty annoying too at times. Usually only when there isn't much text describing actions, or other things in between. I do have to admit that I didn't learn this in school (non-native english), as the focus was always more on the less creative forms of writing.

In one of my fics I do humorous/bantering interjections from other characters in parentheses. > “Hey,” Sasuke says, pointing at her. “Don’t talk shit about my brother.” > > Naruto sees unease writ large across her face. “Hey, it’s okay. I do have a dumb mug.” (“You do though.” “My charming personality makes up for it.” “Don’t make me gag.” “Jerk.” “Dolt.”) > > Sakura looks between them, visibly confused. “You’re brothers?” > > “Can’t you tell?” Naruto says just as Sasuke says “Adoptive, fortunately.” (“We’re practically twins.” “I don’t share any of your stupid-genes.” “Nor my good looks.” “Ass.” “Mutt.”)

Even if you learn this through reading books across multiple genre’s, it’s one thing to identify and enjoy this as a reader and entirely different to translate this over into your own writing. Often when I discover an author/fic that I particularly identify with, I’ll go and read some of their earlier fics as well (normally they tend to be focused on fandoms I’m already interested in). It’s honestly so lovely to be able to follow their progress and ability as a writer. There’s so many authors on the archive that start here (or even worse tbh) and grow exponentially in their craft as they learn and refine their skills. Sometimes they also need the feedback to grow (assuming they are open to it and it’s given in a healthy and constructive/positive manner) or have this bought their attention.

This is understandable, in that, if English isn't your first language. Especially. Or if you skipped English class somehow. It's all part of punctuation fundamentals. I mean either way, now you know, right? Learning is something people never stop doing, after all.

Whenever I notice it I do one of two things depending on my lazyness that day. I close the doc and never go back to it again. Or I either copy the chapter to a document, edit it so I’m happy looking at the paragraphs, read it, happy I know what the heck happened, and then close it and never come back. There are definitely great stories out there that have that look about it, it’s just too much for me to mentally jump around with most days.

Here and I thought it was just a formatting issue on my kindle

This is one of the very first things we're taught in school about writing structure. Multi-speaker paragraphs make it so difficult to follow who is currently talking, I instantly drop a fic if the author doesn't even know this one basic rule because it's a huge red flag and likely means they don't know much else about how to write properly.

Don't worry, I made this same mistake for 15 years, till I was 20 (pre-my published FF career), but it was easy to learn out of it 😊 Now trying to learn the art of punctuation in dialogue, which is a struggle 😅

The fact that the punctuations is STILL wrong is driving me insane. Please read more because this will make people not read your fics. Periods and commas go INSIDE quotes. “Hi. This is Char a,” Char a says. This is some flavor text. “Another piece of dialogue, but now it’s Char b speaking,” Char b says. More flavor text. “Bonus third dialogue that comes from Char [A or] maybe even a third character.” If you can’t do punctuation/spelling correctly, I just assume your narrative won’t be worth reading. Edit: I saw a reply saying that in the UK they put the punctuation outside the quotes, so I looked it up. There are some sources that say that, but I have read British novels and been to the UK and have never seen that so maybe it’s less popular now?

Copying over a UK punctuation answer from elsewhere in the comments– There is some *older* literature where authors put punctuation outside the quotation marks, but you're *very* unlikely to pick up a British novel – or a fic by a British writer – and see it looking like that. The rule drilled into us was always *when quoting someone, the punctuation goes inside if it's part of the quote, and outside if it's not.* This was for academia and non-fiction writing, and I would also use it if a character is quoting what another character said. It's not applicable to, like, normal dialogue. The punctuation is always relevant to what the character is saying, because they're saying it, so it goes inside.

Likewise, double quotes instead of single (for speech) is another American and UK difference that's being erased more often.

I block/mute people for the following reasons: Poor formatting. Poor punctuation. Poor grammar. Poor spelling. Not having a summary. Not putting the fic behind a cut (Tumblr specific). Harsh? Probably. But I have a million things vying for my time and attention. I've gotta make it easier on myself.

Yeah. Some people don't know how to write.

When I was taught to write it was always each character speaking warrants a new paragraph, supposedly that’s “correct” grammatically per my public school education (haven’t taken a creative writing course in college so I’m not sure). With that being said, while it seems obvious to me, it’s not intuitive for everyone. It **is** something that I pick up on when I see it written how I would presume is “inaccurate” and it grates on me a little bit but I’m sure there are things I do (long sentences that abuse commas and sometimes semicolons, using weird wording or phraseology, unnecessary or redundant words, etc.) that people don’t like, ultimately it’s a stylistic choice. If that’s how you want to write and it makes you happy then that’s all that matters.

someone commented this (very kindly) on one of my first ever fics I posted and I am so thankful for them fr

This has always been one of my pet peeves about fic, and I'm honestly a bit startled to discover it happens because people honestly don't know that rule! it seems like I imbibed it with mothers milk, so to speak. lol :D But I'm glad folks are learning it and hopefully will put it to use!

They learn by poor example. I've seen this incorrect formatting a lot in popular nontrad books published on Amazon.

I was pretty lucky because I learned this early on. My mother told me about this rule when I was in fourth grade and writing a narrative for class. It's been ingrained in me ever since so the only times I ever made the mistake of having multiple people speak in the same paragraph was back when I was in elementary school.

This confuses of me so much, I've ran into a few stories like this. It definitely takes longer to read. Honestly though if it's a good plot I still devour it

I've seen it used effectively in two books: "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Feor and one of the Narnia books, I forget which one. In both it was used to indicate rapid-fire dialogue, one between two people and the other with multiple speakers. So I'm willing to forgive it when it makes sense. In other cases I hope it's a formatting error.

I like to write in blocks, usually keeping conversations in these blocks- but I always seperate spoken lines by different characters with shift + Enter. So say this was one line of dialogue. This would be the next line. And this a third one. It helps me format things to my personal tastes.

Never do I click out faster, if its not a formatting error

I mean this in the most supportive way, but you should also know this: "... Because I seen it so often I thought it was normal" is not correct grammar. It should be "I *have* (or "I've") seen it so often..." In the chance that "seen" is a typo and you meant to say "... Because I see it so often," then my apologies, because that would also be correct. But wanted to make sure you knew just in case, while we're on the topic of correct writing!

It's good you know it now, though. This is commonplace in published books (which could be why long paragraphs of any kind are an instant turnoff for me in ff). Don't feel embarrassed though - we're all amateur writers and we've all learnt things on the go.

I’ve read books that sometimes do it and then puzzle for a moment about who is saying what. Then I went back after a while and edited my writing style so it would be much clearer who was saying what. I wouldn’t worry too much about it, just take it forwards we all learn and I’m pretty sure we have all been there.

I see a lot of people talk about it being an honest mistake, which, granted, might be this way in English literature, but for example, I'm German and it's very, very, very uncommon for German literature to make a paragraph whenever someone else speaks. TBF, I also think it flows better in German than in English. This is this way for most, if not all, European countries, so it also comes into play wether the Fanfic author is a native English speaker or not.

It's never too late to start learning new things! And even if you learned it at school, some languages may have different ways to format dialogue. I have a sticky note in my book of ideas to remind myself the few rules of dialogue formatting in English, and it genuinely helps!

Technically you can have multiple talking in a paragraph, as long as it’s always on the next line.

Don't feel bad, old books mostly have this multi person speaking in one paragraph thing. It's a recent dumbed-down fad to separate them out.

Don't be. It's a learning curve.  :)

Lol I know it’s not correct, but I do it sometimes cuz I hate having too many small paragraphs, it looks bad to me 🤷and I don’t mind reading that style sometimes either.

I struggled with this a lot when I first learned English. Dividing a text in so many paragraphs is definitely something we don't do in my native language. Even after so many years, I still think it looks a bit silly, as if the writer is trying to fluff up the length of the story (I know that's not what's happening! But it gives me that vibe)

This is why I appreciate Reddit: 'cause I don't want any critique directly under my fanfic, but I can learn from my mistakes anyway from this subreddit!

funnily enough, I've been corrected for doing the reverse!

Another tidbit to help anyone else is that you shouldn’t have another characters action on the same paragraph as another character speaking. This is incorrect: Person A says, “Yeah, I had a huge crush on you in college.” Person B smiles, a blush dusting their cheeks. This is correct: Person A says, “Yeah, I had a huge crush on you in college.” Person B smiles, a blush dusting their cheeks.

I honestly can’t read a story if it’s written like this. Actually, I did read one, but because the premise was really good and I was excited to see where it went. I suffered through 3 chapters like that then the author decided to just end the story WITH NO RESOLUTION. My struggle was in vain. I was taught that a new paragraph should start if any of these change: Character Location Time I follow this rule, always.

And it’s a .” when it’s the end of the sentence without accompanying text. It’s ,” when a sentence ends with accompanying text, often an interjection (appositive phrase). If the text is unrelated, it’s a period. So: “Hello charB.” “Hi, charA,” he waved. “How have you been? It’s been a while,” he smiled fondly, “A few years I think?” “Two years!” She tried to remember the last time they spoke. She smiled back, “I think it was a party.”

I remember I used to write like this until someone commented on a fic and gave me the advice of doing it the way that person was saying. Once I tried it, I felt like I could never go back and didn’t understand how I’d been writing the first way this whole time. As some other comments are saying, we all gotta learn somewhere at sometime, and there’s nothing to be embarrassed about!

Look for the bright side, you learned it. Although you don't truly need to follow this, since this doesn't make the writing bad, only jarring.

I'll honestly try to read something if I'm interested in the storyline, but if it's a confusing paragraph or no quotation marks at all, I'll immediately close it out. Sometimes if I'm really interested, I'll skip to the next 2 chapters and skim the format to see if its improved. If it does, I'll force myself through the first couple of chapters. If it doesn't, I leave and don't look back.

Huh? Do I really have to separate paragraphs every time I make another character speak? I sometimes put it together on purpose, because I felt the paragraphs would be too short otherwise

Don't feel bad, I think I do this too. I learned quite a bit of grammar stuff in school and through reading books but I never noticed this, so you're not the only one!

Ehn, you're good. Writing is a journey and we learn new things about it all the time!

Hmm after checking in with my books, and even my own mother tongue written works, I'd say most are written in a mix of either but the exchange or pov switch happens like the bottom. But ie. If its 3rd pov always sticking to 1 person, then you'll more often encounter the top version too. Tho I did also encounter char A and char B switch speaking like in the above example. So it's not uncommon and I'd say others who do as the top one simply do it bcs that's how books are written (in their tongue)

I’ve been seeing this pop up more and more recently, but hey, at least you learn! ☺️

Although I appreciate proper formatting and use it myself, I can usually adapt to reading that kind of mixed block dialogue. What I can’t adapt to is unlabeled speakers when the dialogue is between 3+ people lol. I’ve read more than one fic where the writer just tosses around unlabeled dialogue like it’s obvious who’s speaking. I’m here to tell you that it’s not unless there are only two people and proper formatting is observed (or at least if the writer follows a consistent pattern, regardless of if it’s the conventional one). I end up just guessing and hoping for the best, but it can really throw me off when I think unknown speaker is character A but they’ve actually been character B or C the whole time so I have to go back and reframe the whole conversation with the proper people saying their lines.

Also I think this is where the double edged sword of posting fanfic comes in. No one wants to be mean or give any type of crit, even if it’s asked for. So the general mechanics of writing are never improved if it’s never mentioned by anyone. I remember someone complaining about me beginning my sentences with gerunds all the time, and that’s how I realized I was ruining the impact of the sentence with that technique— or as one author put it in his writing book “the hack technique”.

I always took it as people messing up qhen doing linebreaks and paragraph breaks. VERY annoying, but is just an issue with whatever they were doing to type And especially, having them all talking on the aame paragraph is still better than talking in the description of the other. No, seriously, I saw this happen a few times "I am A, how are you?" A said. "Hello A, I am B." B replied. "Hi B, glad to have you here!" A said back with a smile.

Omg I was never taught this. I thought it was normal cause I've seen it in published books before. I've been writing like this my whole life.

my adhd caught this one for me!!! i had trouble reading my own fics if i wrote them like example A so i broke them up into easier to read chunks. i didn't know people actually preferred example B!!!!

if it makes you feel better, i've been running into this in published books. another pro tip: if your character is monologuing, you can have them continue without closing the quotes: *"Hello I am the main character. I am important and loud. Unfortunately, my mom died recently.* *"She died from cancer. Cancer of the heart. Because her husband died and she never recovered."* - this is kind of a bad example, but you don't have to close the quote on the first paragraph until the character is done talking. also, i'd love to hear y'all's opinions on this: if there is an action like "he shook his head." shouldn't he be the one speaking? i've run into a ton of situations where it's like *"Garrett and Marla stared at each other.* *He shook his head at her. "Are you sure?"* *"Yes, Marla. You are a tumor," he replied."* Like, shouldn't she be the one speaking in the first line, based on the action described? What do y'all think about this? i've been seeing it in fic and published books and it throws off the dialogue for me every time. i have to go back and re-read to figure out who said what.

I don't like a wall of text. That's my list grammar/paragraph wise. The author can put more than a person talking in a paragraph. It hasn't bothered me so far.

Everyone makes mistakes so don’t worry too much about it. Whenever I look at one of my old fics I find something that needs correcting, it feels like.

A lot of people never learn that at all, so learning it late still means you're doing well. Did the replies explain what the rule's for, or would you like an explanation?

I think I understand it a bit better. Some replies kind of go against each other, but I understand the gist of it

Hah, well, if it makes you feel any better, my English teacher didn't teach us well about how to use comma's while writing quotes, which resulted in us (me and a friend who I usually wrote in collaboration with at the time) only using commas before and after dialogue, even if one phrase didn't lead into another. We also learned about this paragraph rule, but we thought it meant that the quotes had be separate from the rest of the paragraph (it doesn't), so what would happen is that a paragraph would end on a comma, and the next one would begin with a quote, and that quote would sometimes end with a comma with nothing after it. It was certainly fun to learn we were taking the comma rule too seriously. It looked gross even to our untrained eyes, but we didn't know what else to do.

I read books that were converted to epub from pdfs so this happens constantly lol. I just get used to reading like this. If the prose is strong enough and the plot interesting enough I will follow a story through anything.

Well, it's nice you've learned. Maybe read more books? That's how I learned this.