ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


Language Arts Videos 84 videos

ELA 3: Intro to Whales
5 Views

Whales are great, but when we asked them to tell us a little bit about themselves, all they said was, “Weeeeeeoooooooohhhhhhhh.” So we’re goi...

ELA Drills, Beginner: Meanings 1
99 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Meanings 1. Use context clues from the text to find the answer.

ELA Drills, Intermediate: Spelling 2
23 Views

ELA Drills, Intermediate: Spelling 2. Which word is spelled wrong?

See All

ELA 3: Mark My Words 67 Views


Share It!


Description:

Today's lesson is about using proper punctuation for your writing. It's important to make sure that your words and phrases are marked correctly. Imagine having a character scream "Fire, fire, help." Yeah, that doesn't sound too urgent, does it?


Transcript

00:04

[Coop and Dino singing]

00:13

Writing realistic dialogue can be tough after all you can't have

00:17

characters grunting at each other for an entire book [A couple grunting while eating a meal]

00:19

well maybe you could but it'd be pretty weird book and there's a whole lot of

00:23

rules we have to follow to make sure our dialogue is clear to the reader but [Man nailing rules to a wall]

00:26

never fear we've got some handy dandy tools in our dialogue tool belt and it's

00:31

fashionable to so one important tool at our disposal our dialogue tags [Coop discussing dialogue tags]

00:35

those are simply phrases that identify who said what and we guarantee you've

00:39

seen these before stuff like he said or she said...those are dialogue tags [Examples of dialogue tags]

00:43

they come in handy because the more people are speaking the more important

00:47

it is for the reader to know who's saying what it can be hard enough

00:50

keeping track of a multi-person conversation in person [Lots of people having separate conversations]

00:53

just imagine what it's like when those people don't even have distinct faces

00:56

actually don't imagine that kind of freaky anyway these guys can be as [Boy runs away from faceless people at a dinner table]

01:00

descriptive as you want for example if a woman whispers

01:03

something you can use the tag she whispered or if a man screams something [Man wearing black sunglasses walks into library]

01:07

you can use the tag he screamed we just hope he was polite enough not to scream

01:10

in anyone's ear... There are also a lot of rules that cover the punctuation of

01:14

dialogue one major one is that we use a comma to separate the dialogue tag from [Dino teaching the punctuation of dialogue]

01:19

the actual dialogue so if some guy who works at a pet store picks up a dog and

01:23

says this is a terrier we'd write that as he said comma this is a terrier with [Man holding a terrier dog]

01:28

a comma-separating the dialogue tag from the actual dialogue we could also flip

01:31

the dialogue tag in the dialogue making sure that we continue to separate them

01:35

with a comma we could even add some more text to either side of the dialogue and

01:39

all we need is comma's on either side of the quote to keep it separated turns out

01:43

it's much easier to separate texts for dialogue that it is to separate terrier [Terrier chewing on man's tie]

01:47

from your favorite tie.. The only time this comment separation thing doesn't work is

01:51

if we're dealing with questions or exclamations say the guy now asks the

01:55

terrier are you eating my tie? If any texts came before the dialogue we'd [Man asks terrier if it is eating his tie]

02:00

still separate the two with a comma but if any text comes after the question mark remains in

02:05

place and does the separating same thing happens if it's an explanation like

02:09

you're eating my tie! and yeah he totally is oh and one last

02:13

thing the punctuation that ends dialogue always stays inside the quotation marks

02:17

no matter where the surrounding text happens to be unlike a hungry terrier

02:21

punctuation never manages to escape [Terrier runs away from man holding ties]

Related Videos

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 1
14043 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View. Is the statement in the video true or false?

ELA Drills, Beginner: Textual Analysis 1
405 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Textual Analysis 1. The purpose of the instruction manual was...what?

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 3
90 Views

ELA Drills, Beginner: Point of View 3. Which sentence in the passage best shows the narrator's point of view on the topic of Chelsea Simpson?

Science 3: Sedimentary Rocks and Ancient Buildings
115 Views

We wanted to make a video about sedentary rocks, but we couldn't get lazy uncle Rocky off the couch. Oh well. We'll teach you about sedimentary roc...

Science 3: How Living Things Become Fossils
137 Views

Today we're bringing you the opposite of Jurassic Park—how living things become fossils. Okay okay, it might not be quite as fun...but hey, at le...