What Did They Say?

A common mistake many younger students make is using dialogue (talking) to repeat exactly what characters said to each other in a story. This is often due to enthusiasm because students want to repeat what the characters said and recreate the story. However, dialogue is tricky to write because of all the rules with commas, capitalization, quotation marks, and end punctuation, and often younger students will make several unnecessary mistakes.

We’re not saying never learn to write dialogue correctly. You do need to learn that skill eventually. No, we’re just saying you can work on that later and there is a much simpler and just as good way to show what characters say to each other. Here’s an example:

Susan said, “You can’t go to Jenny’s house with me today.”

“That’s not fair,” replied Benjy.

First, you would have to remember exactly what Susan and Benjy said, because that’s why you are using quote marks. Ask yourself: Is it really that important to know exactly what they said? Often, it is not, and there is a better, simpler, and more sensible way to explain their conversation in an essay:

Susan told Benjy he couldn’t go with her to Jenny’s house. Benjy felt that was unfair.

There. That’s all you need to say. We don’t need to know exactly what words they used because the idea is not that complicated and makes perfect sense without using exact dialogue. We only need to know the basic idea of what Susan told him and how Benjy felt. You can explain that without using quotation marks and increasing your chance of making unnecessary mistakes.

Summarizing and clearly explaining the main idea of what was said is a valuable skill in itself!