Punctuating speech

[Boxlicker101]

We really need quotation marks, AKA inverted commas, to
understand what these sentences mean. _E.g._
"He acted alone," he said, "but someone helped him escape."
"He acted alone," he said, but someone helped him escape.
Are both gammatically valid. In the first sentence, the
escapee is the person acting alone; in the second sentence
the escpaee is the person reporting that the other acted
alone.

The first sentence is perfectly normal dialogue but the second sentence, although it is technically correct, I would change it if I were editing. As it is written, it is a compound sentence but the two clauses appear to be completely unrelated. In fact, they are so unrelated that they may not belong in the same paragraph.

 

[JenniferMidnight]

Punctuation

Whispersecret has summed up the basic golden rules for punctuating conversation in Literotica's section: Writers Resources (How to Make Characters Talk). Check it out...it cleared out a few cobwebs for me!