Online Tool Store
Dialogue Punctuation Checker
Check fiction dialogue for the punctuation rules editors flag: comma versus full stop before a tag, quote nesting, and dropped closing marks.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server.
Text & Writing
Dialogue Punctuation Checker
Frontend preview — no upload or external service.
Findings
3 issues: a full stop before "she said" that should be a comma, an unclosed quotation mark in paragraph 4, and a dialogue tag capitalised after a comma.
How the Dialogue Punctuation Checker works
- Paste a passage of dialogue rather than a whole manuscript — findings are easier to act on in chunks.
- Choose the convention your market uses; US and UK quoting differ in both mark and nesting.
- Work through the findings in order, since one missing closing quote can cascade through the rest of the passage.
The method
A dialogue tag is part of the same sentence as the speech, so the speech ends with a comma and the tag stays lowercase. An action beat is a separate sentence and takes a full stop.
"I know," she said. vs. "I know." She turned away.
Said, asked, whispered are tags. Smiled, nodded, shrugged are not speech verbs, so they form beats — the most commonly miscorrected rule in fiction.
FAQ
Comma or full stop before a dialogue tag?
A comma, and a lowercase tag, because the tag completes the sentence. A full stop belongs when what follows is an action rather than an attribution of speech.
Where does punctuation go with quotation marks?
In US style, commas and full stops go inside the closing quote. In UK style they often go outside unless they belong to the quoted speech — which is why the style setting matters.
Can someone smile a line of dialogue?
Grammatically it is treated as a beat, not a tag, so it takes a full stop and a capital. Many editors object to it entirely; the check flags the punctuation, not the taste.
How we compare
| Feature | Online Tool Store | A word processor | A paid writing assistant |
|---|---|---|---|
| US and UK conventions | ✓ | Partial | ✓ |
| Tag versus action beat | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Text never uploaded | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| No subscription | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
Dialogue Punctuation Checker targets the handful of rules that fill an editor's first markup pass — tags, beats, and quotes left open.