Speech Marks in Composition: Where the Quotation Marks and Commas Go

21 October 2026 · by Larry

A child writes a lively bit of dialogue in composition, and the page comes back with red pen all over the punctuation. The words were fine. The story moved. But the speech marks went round the whole sentence, the full stop sat in the wrong place, and the word after “said” had a capital letter it should not have had. Direct speech looks like a small topic and it generates a surprising number of small marks, because every line of dialogue has four or five places to slip. This piece goes through what the rules are, the slips that come up again and again, and a short exercise to do at home.

What speech marks are for

Speech marks (also called inverted commas or quotation marks) wrap around the exact words someone says, and nothing else. They tell the reader “these words came out of a person’s mouth”. Everything outside them is the writer talking.

Mei looked at the clock. “I am hungry,” she said.

“Mei looked at the clock” is the writer. “I am hungry” is Mei. The words she said are the writer again, telling us who spoke, so they sit outside the marks.

A good way to explain it to a child: if you could put the words in a speech bubble in a comic, they go inside the marks. If they would be in the caption underneath, they stay outside.

The four things that have to be right

Here are the same words written two ways, with the speaker named after the speech and before it.

“I am hungry,” said Mei.
Mei said, “I am hungry.”

Look at what is the same in both, because that is the checklist.

• Speech marks go before the first spoken word and after the last one. Not round the whole line.
• The spoken words start with a capital letter. Even in the middle of a sentence, as in the second line.
• The punctuation that belongs to the speech goes inside the closing speech mark. The comma in the first line and the full stop in the second both sit just before the closing mark, never after it.
• If the speaker is named first, a comma comes before the opening speech mark. If the speaker is named after, a comma (not a full stop) closes the speech.

Children usually get the first one. The other three are where the marks go.

Slip 1: speech marks round the whole sentence

“I am hungry, said Mei.”

The child has wrapped the entire sentence, including said Mei, in one pair of marks. It happens because the sentence is one “thing” in the child’s head. The test is the speech bubble: would Mei’s bubble say “said Mei”? No. So those words come out of the marks.

Slip 2: a full stop where the comma should be

“I am hungry.” said Mei.

This is the most common one in the whole topic. When the speech is a statement and the speaker is named straight after it, the sentence has not ended yet, so the full stop becomes a comma: “I am hungry,” said Mei. The only full stop is at the very end, after the speaker. A child who sees a full stop inside the marks may also want to start said with a capital, which is the next slip.

Slip 3: a capital letter after the speech

“I am hungry,” Said Mei.

If the sentence carries on after the closing mark, the next word is not the start of a new sentence, so it has no capital (unless it is a name). Compare “I am hungry,” said Mei with a name straight after: “I am hungry,” Mei said. The capital on Mei is because she is a person, not because of the speech marks.

Slip 4: question marks and exclamation marks

These work like the comma: they sit inside the closing mark, and they replace the comma rather than joining it.

“Are you hungry?” asked Mei.
“Stop!” shouted the teacher.

Two things catch children out. One is writing both, as in “Are you hungry?,”. The other is a capital after the mark: asked and shouted stay lower case here, because the sentence is still going. A question mark does not start a new sentence when the speaker follows.

Slip 5: the speech is split in two

When the speaker is named in the middle, the speech marks close and reopen, and the second part does not start with a capital because it is the same sentence carrying on.

“I am hungry,” said Mei, “so let us eat.”

The commas sit inside the first closing mark and straight after Mei. The second part, so let us eat, begins with a small letter. If the speech is two separate sentences, it is different: “I am hungry,” said Mei. “Let us eat.” Now the second piece begins a new sentence, so it gets a capital. This one is worth leaving until the first four are steady, because it is two rules at once.

Slip 6: a new speaker, but the same line

In dialogue, each time a different person starts speaking, the writing moves to a new line. A child who runs two people’s words together on one line makes the reader work out who said what.

“Are you hungry?” asked Mei.
“Very,” said Ken.

This is as much about being kind to the reader as about punctuation. If the child has two speakers and no new lines, the whole exchange is hard to follow, however correct the marks are.

Speech marks and reported speech are not the same thing

There is a second way to tell the reader what someone said, and it uses no speech marks at all.

Mei said that she was hungry.

Here the writer is telling us what was said instead of quoting it. The words change with it: I am became she was. Children who have just learned speech marks sometimes put them round reported speech too, as in Mei said that “she was hungry”. The question to ask: could these be the exact words Mei spoke? “She was hungry” is not what Mei said to anyone, so it does not get marks. The free English practice has a Reported Speech topic at Primary 6 that works on the second kind. Which level the school teaches each kind at is set by the school and the MOE syllabus (moe.gov.sg), so go by your child’s own worksheets.

What helps

• Read the dialogue aloud and ask who is talking. Whatever a person says out loud goes in the marks; the rest does not. Doing it with a pencil, underlining just the spoken words, makes the marks almost place themselves.
• Copy a page of a story she likes. Choose a page with dialogue and have her copy two or three lines, then look at where the commas and full stops sit. It is quicker than any rule list, and the pattern becomes familiar.
• Fix one slip at a time. If the full stop-before-said habit is the main one, deal with that alone for a week before bringing in capitals or split speech.
• Check the end of each line of speech. Is there a comma, question mark or exclamation mark inside the closing mark? That is the single check that catches the most.
• Make dialogue short in the first draft. Two lines of speech done correctly are worth more than a page of speech with the rules half remembered.

What does not help

• Telling her to “remember the rules” without a model sentence in front of her. The rules are several small decisions; a sentence she can copy from is more use than a list.
• Correcting every mark on a composition at once. Pick the one slip that appears most and circle only that.
• Banning dialogue until the punctuation is perfect. Dialogue is often what makes a story come alive, and a child who is steered away from it to stay safe loses a good tool. Let her try it and fix the marks afterwards.

A six-sentence check you can do at home

These are made up for this page. Ask your child to add the missing punctuation to each: speech marks, commas, full stops, question marks and capital letters as needed.

• i have finished my homework said Ken
• Mei asked where is my pencil case
• stop shouted the teacher
• can I have some water asked Ken
• it is raining said Mei so we cannot play outside
• Ken said that he was tired (hint: no speech marks needed)

Compare her answers with these: “I have finished my homework,” said Ken.  Mei asked, “Where is my pencil case?”  “Stop!” shouted the teacher.  “Can I have some water?” asked Ken.  “It is raining,” said Mei, “so we cannot play outside.”  Ken said that he was tired.

Do not look at the score first. Look at which kind of mark went wrong. If the full stop sits inside the marks where a comma should be in sentences one and five, it is slip 2. If the capital letter is missing at the start of the spoken words, it is the capital rule. One pattern is easier to fix than six scattered errors.

Where this fits

Speech marks sit beside the other small punctuation and word decisions that decide marks in English. The apostrophe rules in the piece on their, there and they’re are a different mark with its own rules, and children often mix up what each mark is for. When the problem is not the punctuation but having nothing to say, the piece on composition starts earlier, and joining sentences well is covered in the piece on who, which and whose. Marking schemes for composition differ from school to school, so look at how your child’s own teacher marks punctuation rather than assuming a number of marks.