For Seniors: Punctuating Dialogue
Follow this link to learn the rules of punctuating dialogue. This page is linked to another page (click here) that provides more detailed punctuation rules.
Part of your dialogue grade will be based on correct written expression.
posted by JTF @ 3:04 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Sammy walked home to find his parents lounging in the living room.
“Why are you home Sammy, you aren’t supposed to get off work for three more hours!” Sammy’s father exclaimed.
“I’ve had enough of the A&P,” I said.
“What do you mean son?” my father asked as he got up from his plush blue recliner.
“Lengal is a jerk, I’m done,”
“You speaking nonsense! What do you mean?”
“ I quit dad, no more working at the A&P for me!” I laughed.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” said my father in a concerned tone.
“Lengal embarrassed these poor girls, I just couldn’t take it!”
“Lengal is our friend. You are entirely out of line for quitting over that,” said my father. “And money? How do you expect to pay for your expenses with no job?”
“I’ll just find another job. Anything is better than the A&P.”
“I want you to apologize to Lengal for leaving in the middle of your shift.”
“No way!” I screamed. “Not after what he did to those girls!”
“This is not open for debate, Sammy. You will go back to the A&P, and you will apologize to Lengal,” demanded my father as he walked out of the room.
“Mom, I don’t want to do this.”
“Just listen to your father, Sammy.”
Sammy rolled his eyes and left the room.
Sammy walks in the door of the A&P. Lengel gives him a glance and walks over swiftly.
“Hello Sammy,” said Lengel.
“Lengel, we can we talk?” asked Sammy.
“What is it Sammy?” replied Lengel.
“I’ve made a mistake,” Sammy said, “I was out of line yesterday. My outburst was completely unacceptable.”
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Lengel retorted.
“I’d really appreciate it if I could get my job back,” Sammy requested.
“Alright, but you’re going to have to work your way from the bottom back up,” replied Lengel.
“I understand that,” Sammy said.
“Good, I’m starting you as box boy,” said Lengel.
“Okay, but why did you have to go so hard on those girls?” Sammy asked, “They didn’t have a change of clothes.”
“Sammy, when you’re a manager, you gotta be the bad guy sometimes,” Lengel replied.
“Alright, next time I won’t be so rash to just quit,” said Sammy.
“Good call,” Lengel said.
“Yeah my parents gave me a lot of crap about quitting,” said Sammy.
Lengel said, “Quitters aren’t winners Sammy, I know the world is hard out there, I’m just trying to prepare you for it.”
“Thanks for being such a good family friend, Lengel,” said Sammy.
Sammy nervously walked into his home to face his parents after his outburst at work.
"Sammy, why are you home? Did they let you go early?" Sammy's father asked.
"No dad, today I quit A&P," said Sammy.
"What? You cannot do that! Something outrageous must have happened for you to do such a irrational thing!" his father yelled.
"Lengal is an idiot, I can't work with him anymore."
"Are you crazy? He's one of the nicest bosses you will ever have! What did he do?"
"He embarrassed these poor girls when all they needed to buy was sour cream for one girls mother. It's not their fault that the only thing they had to wear was their bathing suits," Sammy exclaimed.
"Oh Oh of course its not their fault," his father sarcastically answered. "You will go back to A&P, apologize to Lengal, and get your job back. No excuses."
"No way dad ! Lengal was out of line."
"You are being out of line son, now go to your room and think about this awful decision you made today."
Sammy angrily left the room, still having the image of the three girls in his mind.
As I walked home, I though about what I was going to say to my parents. How would they react? Would I be punished? How can I break it to them without them going crazy?
I took my time walking up the sidewalk as i turned on to my street. I loaped up to the door and took one final deep breath as I opened the door to face my fate.
"Hey honey, you're home early, how was work?" This killed me, my mother was always so supporting of me having a job.
"Uhh, ok i guess. I've had better days."
"Oh... well anything interesting happen?" She knew something was wrong. I can tell in her voice.
"What now, did you lose your job again?" I heard my Dad say from the living room. Boy, he can really nail it on the head sometimes. He walked into the kitchen, "cause you know I had a real tough time gettin' you some work around here..."
I looked at their blank faces and manged to scrape the words "good call, Dad" out of my dry throat.
He looks at me and starts to chuckle, and not the good chuckle, like the way you chuckle when something funny happens. "unbelievable, unbelievable. What do you plan on doing now?"
"I don't know find a new job I guess." One of my famous smart-ass remarks.
My mom cut off my fathers follow-up argument, "Lets just eat dinner we can talk later." Good thing she said that, I really wasn't in the mood.
She put the Green Beans on the table and we sat down to eat. Dinner was pretty quiet that night.
Qeenie and the rest of her pack walked out into the hot sun, made a sharp right and began their way home.
Emily (chunky, green bathing suit girl) turns to her friend and exclaims, “Can you believe the nerve of that manager?”
Jessica (girl in pink bathing suit) squeaks, “I know! We were just minding our own business, buying stuff.”
Emily nods, “What were we supposed to do, we were sunbathing and our moms didn’t give us much time to change.”
“True, plus its summer, and hot out,” Jessica states.
In a harsh tone of agreement Emily says “Yah, we were decent, what was his deal?”
Emily sneaks a look at Queenie’s expressionless face, and curiously wonders why she hasn’t said anything, and asks, “Ava, you agree right?”
Startled Ava mutters “Huh, what, oh yeah of course.”
Used to having her be more outspoken Jessica asks, “What’s wrong?”
Ignoring this comment Ava blurts out, “Do you think that dorky cashier quit?”
“Maybe, I didn’t hear”, Jessica says.
Ava continues, “No, I thought I heard the manager arguing with him, he said he quit, twice!”
Emily flinches, “Did he do that because of us?”
Jessica smirks, “I think he did it for Ava, did you see the way he looked at her?”
Ava turning her head blushes, “Ha, I hope not, that would be stupid!”
Jessica seeing her blush states, “Ha, I knew you liked him, you always blush when you’re interested in someone.”
Shoving Jessica playfully Ava blushes again and denies it.
Emily’s eyes glow when she sees a familiar face turn the corner, and yelps, “Ava here’s your chance!”
Sammy approaches them with his head slumped, mumbling, “What did I do?”
The girls exchange quick glances at each other and begin to laugh.
Sammy struts out of the A & P, still pulsing with adrenaline. He sees the girls half a block down and thinks it'd be a good idea to sprint towards them, showcase his athletic side.
"Well, hellllllloooo ladies."
The queenie was the first one to say anything. "Um, who are you?"
"The name is Samuel Heller the fourth but you can just call me Sammy."
"Or we won't call you anything..."
Sammy doesn't have time to respond before the chunky one chimes in, "Uh, why are you sweating so much?"
Sammy answered coolly, "I was just trying to give you ladies a little taste of my natural athleticism. I don't want to brag but my nickname used to be 'Superquickfast Sammy'. I always win the 100 yard dash at our annual family picnic".
The girls stared blankly.
Sammy, not getting the hint, keeps pushing on, "Alright, well, so am I coming to the beach with you guys now that I'm free the rest of the day?"
The plaid one asked, "...again, who are you?"
"Uh, I'm Sammy, ya know? From the store? "
"Oh right, but I don't really see why you are talking to us so we're gonna go now..."
"What?! I just lost my job for you ladies! I acted like a knight in shining armor and you're saying you all won't be my princesses?!"
The three girls laughed in his face. "NO. Now run home you weird little boy."
Sammy, finally getting the hint, decides to go back to the store and try to get his job back.
"Oh my God, I really need to find those girls! I can't believe I just quit my job. What am I doing? Wait... what beach did they say they were going to? Maybe I should just turn around and talk to Lengal. No, wait. I can't. I can't do that now."
I pulled into the parking lot closest to the beach, and wondered why this was more difficult than it should be. The thoughts continued racing through my mind until I saw them. There they were, Queenie, Goonie Goonie, and even the fat girl.
"We weren't doing anything wrong!" Queenine whined to her two friends. "All we wanted were those Herring snacks!"
Goonie nodded her head, "They should be lucky we were even providing them business!"
"Hey..." I said as I began to approach the three.
"Who is that?" The fat girl whispered to Goonie, not intending to be so obvious.
"Is that the boy from the A & P?" Goonie wondered aloud.
I could feel their stare as they glared at me awkwardly. "Yeah... I was the cashier at A & P. I just thought... well I don't really know what I was thinking but I quit my job."
"Oh." Queenie stated, unsure of how to respond. "Come on girls. This part of the beach seems to be a bit crowded."
"But, wait!" I begged. They turned back around to hear what else I had to offer. "Well didn't you hear me? I quit my job! I saw the way the manager treated you. You didn't deserve to be kicked out."
"You're right. Did you bring the Herring?" Queenie asked.
"Well, no. To be honest, I didn't really think about it. Deciding to quit was a spontaneous decision. I sort of didn't have much else on my mind."
"You know..." Goonie began to speak, "Maybe you should try and get your job back."
I let out an exasperated sigh as I watched the three girls walk away from me.
"Great..." I muttered to myself. "No job, no girl, no luck. I can't wait until my parents hear about this."
Sammy stormed through the exit of the A&P, and never looked back. He couldn’t bare to see all of the familiar faces of loyal customers and coworkers he had known for years staring at him through the glass store front window. Feelings of resentment, anger, frustration, loss, and regret were swimming around frantically in his head. All he wanted was to see Queenie, who was nowhere to be found. Sammy slammed the door of his but up truck shut, and pressed the pedal to the floor the whole way home. As he raced up the driveway, he swerved to miss hitting his mother who was watering the flowers.
His mother, who appeared extremely frightened, exclaimed, “Oh my gosh Sammy! You almost hit me! Why are you driving so fast!? What happened?! What’s wrong!”
Sammy, still sitting in his truck, simply replied, “ I’m so stupid.”
“Tell me what happened?! Are you okay! Aren’t you supposed to be at work?!”
“I quit.”
The look on his mother’s face froze as she questioned in shock, “….You what?”
“I said, I quit.”
“I can’t believe it Sammy, why would you ever quit that job! It was a nice, steady job close to home with a decent income. How are you going to make money now?! How are you going to get another job?!”
Sammy, at this moment, had reached his boiling point. First the girls, then his boss, now his mom. He couldn’t hold it in any longer, he was a bomb ready to explode. And his mom had just set it off. “Mom! You don’t understand! There was this girl, and her friends, and they were walking around, and the bathing suits, and I rang them up, and then the manager came, and then-“
Sammy’s mother interrupted him, and the hard look on her face suddenly softened and revealed a more sensitive expression. She took a deep breath and with a reassuring smile she calmly said, “Sammy, it’s okay. Let’s just calm down and go inside. I’ll make you something to eat and we can sit down and discuss what happened.”
And as soon as Sammy stepped out of that truck and into his mother’s arm, he could feel the weight of the world being lifted off of his shoulders.
Post a Comment
<< Home