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Dialogue is the art of showing what characters are saying in the story. Anything that comes out of a character's mouth should be put in quotation marks. Punctuating dialogue is often tricky, since the punctuation marks often changed based on the situation. The following is an excerpt from a story which includes different elements of punctuating dialogue.

     "Get that light bulb out of your mouth," Judy said, "otherwise you'll get your nasty spit all over it and we won't be able to use it."

     "Look, I can eat it if I want to," said Larry.

     "No you can't. We need that bulb. It's our last one," seethed Judy.

     "I don't care; I'm hungry and I'm going eat it if I want to. There is nothing you can do about it," replied Larry.

     Judy threw a book at him and shrieked, "You stupid moron, you're not even supposed to eat light bulbs. They're not food!"

     "They're not?" he asked, dumbfounded.

     "No, they're not!" she said.

Please note on line 2 that at the end of a quote a comma is placed inside the quotation mark if there is a tag (said Larry) at the end. The real end of the sentence comes after Larry, not "to". Therefore, the end punctuation comes after Larry. You might notice that there is end punctuation in the last line which is inside the quotes. A question mark and exclamation point are appropriate because they show emotion or how the sentence is supposed to be read. It is still not the end of the sentence. Please study the text to determine when to use end punctuation and when not to.