Dialog/Quotation practices

[DiapDealer]

Just curious if there is an accepted, or more preferred, way of dealing with quoted dialog passages that span multiple paragraphs. I myself have seen about three different methods of handling this in professional works and was just curious if there are any hard and fast rules that govern it.

(All of these examples deal with only one person, who is continually speaking, but where natural paragraph breaks still need(?) to occur)

1) I've seen it handled very simply with opening quotes at the very beginning and closing quotes at the very end of the entire passage:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

2) I've also seen it where each paragraph is quoted separately:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

3) And I've seen it (less frequently) where only the opening quotation mark is used at the beginning of each paragraph and withholding the closing quotation mark until that person is finished speaking:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

As a reader: #1 makes me feel like someone simply forgot a quotation mark at the beginning of a paragraph; while #2 usually tricks me into believing there's been a character change in the dialog (new speaker). #3 just tends to confuse the crap out of me.

If there's a cut and dried rule, I'd like to know it. If not... what is everyone's preference?

[teh603]

Number three is, from what I remember, the correct one. The reason its so confusing is because characters don't usually go on long monologues without someone else saying something. The only one I can remember like that was Nyarlathotep in one of H. P. Lovecraft's dreamland works.

[mrscoach]

Number three is supposed to be the correct way. I find that if there is a long speech then maybe there should be some sort of expression or action happening, too. Like 'they sighed' or 'they whirled and glared before continuing' or even 'they gestured dramatically', that sort of thing.
Let's face it, usually a long speech is because someone is impassioned, so maybe some facial explanation or action wouldn't be remiss. If they aren't impassioned then the speech probably needs to be broken up into smaller chunks, just for a brain rest.

[DiapDealer]

So number three, is official, huh?

I agree it's fairly rare (or should be, anyway)—and I'm really asking in more of an amateur proof-reading capacity than anything—but number three just seems... weird.

Thanks for the info.

[mrscoach]

I looked it up online, and some places said that if the dialogue is too long to break it up by momentarily diverting the attention to another character, then back to the speech. Another site just said to break it up with action, to remind your readers that the characters are 'physical human beings'.

Really, I'm being too lazy to pull out my textbooks and look this up, so the internet search. LOL

[Penforhire]

The Chicago Manual of Style agrees with #3 (section 10.25, in my 13th editon).

[HarryT]

Number 3 is certainly the standard way to do it in British English. If you close the quotes at the end of a paragraph it indicates that the current speaker has finished, and the next quotes are a different person speaking.

[ekster]

From what I remember, #3 is the proper way of doing it.

[HarryT]

I would add that #3, although correct, generally confuses the hell out of tools which try to "smarten" punctuation (ie replace straight quotes with curly ones). The smarten punctuation tool in Calibre, for example, puts a close quote instead of an open quote at the start of the 2nd and subsequent paragraphs in the continued quote.

[anamardoll]

I dislike three, as a reader. The open quote makes me think that someone else is talking, regardless of the lack of an end quote that my eyes rarely register.

As a reader, I would prefer #1.

[Suzanna]

Yep, #3 is correct. As someone who has a specialist degree in English lit, who's had to quote a whole heck of a lot in essays, that was the only method my university professors would accept.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I dislike three, as a reader. The open quote makes me think that someone else is talking, regardless of the lack of an end quote that my eyes rarely register.

As a reader, I would prefer #1.

Unfortunately, correctness of grammar and ease of reading have been divorced for at least a century.

[ekster]

I think it just depends what you're used to. For me, #1 would make me think I missed a double quote somewhere and would waste time rereading. It would really annoy me as a reader.

And #2 would make me think someone else started talking, so I would again have to go back and reread, or worse, continue reading and never realize it's the same person talking.

I'm used to #3, so it's pretty natural for me.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ekster

I'm used to #3, so it's pretty natural for me.

That's the point: it's a convention. Once you are familiar with the convention, it makes sense, and allows you to see when the current speaker has finished speaking, and somebody else takes over. And that's the whole point of quotation marks - to allow the reader to follow a conversion between multiple speakers without having to fill the text with "Fred said...", "Joe replied...", etc.

[DiapDealer]

The more I think about it. The more number three makes sense to me. A closing quote indicates the speaker stopped talking. Until you see that indicator, the same speaker is still going.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would add that #3, although correct, generally confuses the hell out of tools which try to "smarten" punctuation (ie replace straight quotes with curly ones). The smarten punctuation tool in Calibre, for example, puts a close quote instead of an open quote at the start of the 2nd and subsequent paragraphs in the continued quote.

Not to mention playing hell with my personal regex.
This is a big part of why I asked the question in the first place.