Definition:
A conversation between two or more people in a drama or narrative. When quoting dialogue, put the words of each speaker inside quotation marks, and indicate changes in speaker by starting a new paragraph. See also:
- Monologue
- Dialogue Guide
- Using Quotation Marks Effectively
- Sentence Variety in Thurber's "Life and Hard Times"
Etymology:
From the Greek, "conversation"Examples and Observations:
- Dialogue, which helps to recreate people and events rather than just tell about them, can become a dominant form and thereby shape your writing."
(S. Reid, The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, 2000) - Annina: Monsieur Rick, what kind of a man is Captain Renault?
Rick: Oh, he's just like any other man, only more so.
(Joy Page and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, 1942) - "'How are you?' I said.
"'As you see,' old Hernandez said, and he pushed his cap back on his forehead and smiled, 'alive.'"
(Martha Gellhorn, "The Third Winter," 1938) - "In its beginning, dialogue's the easiest thing in the world to write when you have a good ear, which I think I have. But as it goes on, it's the most difficult, because it has so many ways to function. Sometimes I needed a speech do three or four or five things at once--reveal what the character said but also what he thought he said, what he hid, what others were going to think he meant, and what they misunderstood, and so forth--all in his single speech."
(Eudora Welty, interviewed by Linda Kuehl. The Paris Review, Fall 1972) - "[T]he dialogue is selective--finely polished, and arranged to convey the greatest possible amount of meaning with the least use of words. . . . [Dialogue] is not a phonographic
reproduction of the way people actually talk. It’s the way they
would talk if they had time to get down to it and refine what they
wanted to say."
(Robertson Davies, "The Art of Fiction No. 107." The Paris Review, Spring 1989)
Pronunciation: DI-e-log
Alternate Spellings: dialog
