Newbie needing some assistance.

[DaveyPump]

Hi, I have submitted 5 stories over a week or so; initially all have been rejected for the reason:

Please fix the punctuation of your dialogue. The convention is that you include periods, commas, exclamation points, or question marks inside the quotes. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions.

After re-doing three of these; two have been accepted and the third rejected on the same grounds.

I am a little lost, I think I have separated into appropriate paragraphs and punctuation seems ok.

Seeking an editor to go over my three stories still requiring some adjustment. They are not massively long stories, averaging around 1200-1500 words each.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

David

 

[sr71plt]

There are still dialogue punctuation problems even with the stories that posted. Maybe this is an indication of what is wrong with the ones being rejected and the two that posted just somehow slipped through?

* * *

"No we can't, we don't have swimmers.[should be a comma, not a period]" is your reply.

"Ppffftt swimmers. I'm going in nude.[should be a comma, not a period.]" I say as I start to take off my shirt. "Come on babe,[should be a semicolon or these should be separate sentences] it will be fun".[the American system is to put the period inside the close quotation mark. It's unclear to me whether the editor rejects for this--the web site does itself use the American system.]

I can see you are considering,[should be a period, not a comma.] I continue to strip down taking off my pants and boxer shorts. You giggle[should be a comma here] seeing my willy flapping around and my white bum in the moonlight.

"Come on, hurry.[should be a comma, not a period.]" I say.

* * * *

If you PM me (private mail system, top right of this page), I can provide an e-mail to attach a Word version to and will take a look at the story rejected twice, but it looks like you have massive punctuation problems even with the ones that were posted and maybe you should be brushing up on your grammar first.