"I'm saying something," Said Mister Character

"I'm shouting something!" Shouted Mister Character

"I'm whispering something..." Whispered Mister Character

What's wrong with these three lines?

846640
They're redundant?

The dialogue modifier is unnecessary because the dialogue itself identifies the speaker's tone of voive

846640

Well, the last one works. The other two have dialogue punctuation issues.

846640

Boring as shit. I'd use more creative words and re-word them.

The first two don't need the capital letters on the dialogue tags.

846640 "I'm repeating myself," Mr. Repetitive repetitively and repeatedly repeated.

Also: "Said" should not be capitalized in the first two, and the ellipsis is completely unnecessary in the third. I think.

846640

First two - They shouldn't have a capital letter after the dialogue.

Third one - Using '...' doesn't signify whispering, it signifies trailing off.

I'm not quite sure what else you could be getting at.

There's no punctuation after Mister Character! And Said and shouted are capitalized.

It should be this:

"I'm saying something," said Mister Character.
"I'm shouting something!" shouted Mister Character.
"I'm whispering something..." whispered Mister Character.

Yes, I like perfect grammar!

'Said', 'shouted and 'whispered' shouldn't be capitalised. It seems to be cropping up more and more often.

No ponies in the sentences?

846661

Ellipses act weird, though. Sometimes, you can capitalize the word that comes after it. Other times, you can't. My editors just leave it capped because that's what I prefer.

*Looks over the comments.*

God damn it.

Mister Character's got all the dialogue?

846661
Oh, shoot. I thought you were going for the dialogue and the tag being redundant.

Bleh. I never know when, or when not to cap something at the end of dialogue. I am know just starting to figure out where a damn semicolon goes. I never use an ellipsis either; I know they are supposed to be used for an extended pause. I just think that's where narration should come in.

846704

I just think that's where narration should come in.

'Nothing happened for a moment. A moment later, there was still nothing happening. For a third moment nothing continued to happen.'

'The inactivity of the situation hung motionless in the metaphorical air. The pause hung stale, refusing to grow, due to the activity such an act would produce. The awkwardness persisted until an action broke the lack of actions.'

They're boring.

Also, you don't need a speech identifier every time someone talks. You can get away with "loose" lines, especially in dialogue, where speech is back-and forth.

As a rule of thumb, I tend to avoid identifiers as long as my reader can understand who's saying what. Allow me to shamelessly promote a fic, therefore, with an example.

Miss Cheerilee finally spoke, breaking Rumble out of his self-pitying reverie.

“What’s going on, Rumble?”

Rumble shrugged, taking his moist hooves away from his dampened face.

“I’m sitting here with you.”

Cheerilee gave a small laugh, and gave a remarkably calm reply.

“Yes, but you know what I mean, Rumble.”

She wasn’t mad. That was the scariest part to Rumble. Maybe she’d seen this before. Maybe she knew. Maybe other colts had been raped and she’d seen it. Maybe she was a rapist like Scootaloo. But Miss Cheerilee wasn’t evil, simply not worth talking to. Rumble shook his head. The world was so hard to see in black and white when everyone was shades of gray.

“Uhm… What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Miss Cheerilee said, “That you have a lot to worry about. You live with your brother, no parents as far as I know…”

“Um, they’re missionaries, Miss Cheerilee. Bringing electricity and water and all that stuff to poor ponies. They went to Zebrica last year and haven’t come back yet.”

Miss Cheerilee breathed out, seemingly in relief. “Oh, how wonderful. I mean, it’s not wonderful that they’re away and you have to live with your brother, but I mean, they’re not…” She shook her head. “I have a few other students who have a bit more… Tragedy to that aspect of their lives. I shouldn’t have made such assumptions.”

Rumble was listening to Cheerilee for once. Her voice was familiar. He couldn’t put his hoof on it, but the tone sounded very similar to something else he had heard. Perhaps it was his mother. It had a motherly tinge to it. No. It wasn’t that… She sighed, and Rumble listened again, hoping to pick up on what made her voice so familiar.

“Anyways, Rumble, you don’t have terrible grades, but you were doing much better earlier in the year. When you transferred from Cloudsdale, you seemed to handle the transition well. I’m really shocked that you didn’t keep up after that. So that has to be frustrating.”

Rumble closed his eyes, still listening, trying to imagine various tonalities and voices she may have undertaken over the years, trying to find a match in his limited mental backlog.

“I know Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon say plenty of awful things to ponies, but I had hoped that they would be able to keep it off-campus at the least. I trust they were taunting you?”

Rumble nodded, still trying to piece together Miss Cheerilee’s voice.

“I’m sorry. I had hoped that they would have been more civil after the last time I took them aside.”

“It’s okay,” he murmured, hoping to spur Cheerilee on, although he knew that she most likely had more to say anyways. She gave another hefty sigh, and Rumble knew that the warming process was now over.

“But still, Rumble, that doesn’t excuse you using that sort of language, and it especially doesn’t excuse you from using it towards another student, and it especially doesn’t excuse you from using it towards a filly. Might I ask where you learned that word?”

Rumble panicked for a blip of a second, but before Cheerilee could notice, he had found a solution. He had to suppress a smirk at his half-truth, knowing full well what it would entail.

“Thunderlane. My brother.”

Might as well slap it onto him.

846816

I've seen too much of this fandom. I read

moist hooves

in your example, and was instantly like "I don't like where this is going." Glad you kept it classy, champ.

846661

Erm... whispered wasn't capitalized...

846839 It ain't a classy fic, I'll tell ya that. :3

846847

Shush. I was working on a PS3 at the time. You try posting with a thumbpad.

The wrong I can see is the lack of SWAG in the name "Mister Character".

846661 I see that a LOT in one writer's work I edit for... makes for a long work session editing a 5k chapter for him lol

So when are you supposed to not capitalize something after a speaker is done talking? I was always told; or at least always thought I was told. That a line of dialogue is a sentence unto itself, and any narrative that followed would be the reaction, or emotional description of what was said.

847116 It varies, because not every line of dialogue is a 'sentence unto itself'. Here's how it works.

"When you're not using a dialogue tag, end the quotation with a period, question mark, or exclamation point, but not a comma." The commenter paused to collect his thoughts, before finishing his point. "Then, the word after that quotation - which will begin its own sentence - starts with a capital letter." He proceeded to provide further examples.

"On the other hand, if you do follow a quotation with a dialogue tag, use a comma instead of a period," the commenter added, "and don't capitalize the first word after your quotation."

Does that help?

846640
Dialogue issues are one of the most common edits I have to make. It's really rather grating that you say you see a lot of them slipping through onto the site, which just keeps the cycle going for even more people to make the mistakes.

847224

Hey, I call it as I see it. It's probably the second or third most common thing I see, especially from newbies, who at least have an excuse.

847247
A reason, perhaps, saying excuse is a bit much. Ah well.

847256

Well, you know what I mean. Not literally an excuse, more of an 'expected error/common mistake' sort of thing.

847263
Agreed.

847193 I see. So the dialogue tag are linking verbs like 'said,' 'whispered,' 'shouted,' etc etc. To where they would be completing the spoken sentence inside the next line of dialogue, if there were to be any.

This being the case. I hope no one looks at my story from a proper grammer usage of that rule. Or I am screeeeeewed

While we're on the subject, I have a pretty bad-ish habit - at least I think it's bad - of not being very creative with dialogue attribution. Third person perspective with a lot of dialogue is, unfortunately, what my long-running fic is. I'd love some pointers if anyone in here has any. I used "said" a lot, for sure, because it's sort of a word that people glaze over while reading. It's just sort of there, you know someone is speaking... To be honest, when I am reading, I don't really even think about attribution too much. However, when writing, I am always thinking about it, and always worrying that it's too bland.

And as for the subject of the OP here, I haven't seen people capitalizing like that, myself, but it's pretty annoying. I don't like the overuse of ellipses either.

846640

"And I'M SHOUTING AT YOU!" Shouted Surprise in her shouty shouting voice, shoutingly, as she shouted out a shout that reverberated around the room and broke windows and possibly other things as well with a sudden shout of shoutiness.

847533 You're on the right track sticking with 'said' rather than substituting a lot of cheap tags, i.e. 'asked', 'exclaimed'. When you do replace it, make sure you're using a strong verb that actually adds depth. If your character's angry with somepony, don't just throw a 'yelled' in there, since usually it won't tell us anything more than we pick up from the dialogue. Let us hear the character in our heads. Use verbs like 'hissed', 'snarled', 'gritted', etc.
TL;DR: If the tag doesn't add anything to the dialogue, chances are it's filler. Stick with 'said' or omit the tag completely.