I recently edited a book that included the sentences below. Both contain common punctuation errors. (I changed the details to protect the writer’s privacy.)

     “I can see you’re surprised,” he raised an eyebrow.

     “Tell me more about your day.” She said with a shrug.

What are the errors?

In both cases, the writer used the wrong punctuation at the end of the dialogue. In the first sentence, she needed a period, not a comma, after surprised. In the second sentence, she needed a comma, not a period, after day.

After making the punctuation changes, the capitalization also needs to be changed in both sentences. The he in the first sentence needs to be upper case and she in the second sentence needs to be lower case. These are correct:

     “I can see you’re surprised.” He raised an eyebrow.

     “Tell me more about your day,” she said with a shrug.

Why was what my client wrote incorrect? Here are the rules:

If the dialogue tag contains a verbalized term you need a comma between the dialogue and the tag. Some examples are said, noted, or stated. That is, it’s possible for characters to say, note, or state something, so punctuate like this:

     “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

But characters can’t verbalize an eyebrow raise or a shrug, so this punctuation is incorrect:

     “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she shrugged.

If you want the character to shrug, that’s fine, but write:

     She shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

or

     “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shrugged.

Here are some more punctuation rules for dialogue and dialogue tags.

Sometimes you need neither a comma nor a period after the dialogue.

When you’re using either an exclamation point or a question mark that’s all you need. Don’t add a comma or period. These sentences are correct:

     “You told me that before!” he said.

     “You told me that before?” he asked.

Additionally, when your character is asking a question you can often eliminate the dialogue tag. The punctuation mark tells your readers it’s a question. You only need the dialogue tag when you need to make it clear who’s doing the asking.

Rarely, if ever, use more than one dialogue tag in the same dialogue.

The rules are different here for fiction and nonfiction writers. In fiction, this is inferior usage:

     “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I was nowhere near the bank when it got robbed,” she added.

The phrase she added is unnecessary and distracting. Drop it; your readers know it’s the same person speaking.

For nonfiction writers, using more than one dialogue tag (more commonly called attribution in nonfiction) is always incorrect.

Never use a colon or semicolon between dialogue and its tag.

This is wrong:

     “I’ve never seen such a beautiful sunset;” he said.

If you’re using Microsoft Word to write, Word picks up some potential punctuation errors in dialogue punctuation. However, Word did not flag any of my incorrect examples in this article. Additionally, when I typed he in the sentence with the exclamation point Word automatically capitalized it. Word was wrong. Although Word can be helpful, well-trained writers are smarter and wiser than a computer program will ever be. There’s no substitution for knowledge and careful editing.