General editing notes

• Numbers one to nine are spelled out, 10 and above are shown in digits
• Thoughts are usually shown in italics (never use quotation marks for thoughts)
• In Australia, we use single quotation marks for dialogue
• Use an apostrophe and an ‘s’ when showing possessive for surnames and Christian names: Jones’s / Elvis’s / Magnus’s (only Jesus’ name has no ‘s)
• No need for full stops after titles: Mrs / Dr / Mr
• All book, magazine and newspaper titles are shown in italics
• Don’t precede action with ‘he turned…’  ‘she began…’ go straight to the dialogue or action
• Underlining is out of fashion, in titles and in text
• Avoid using bold within text, use italics for emphasis
• Don’t use full stops in titles of stories, poems, books, etc.
• Centre spacing of poetry is generally considered amateurish
• Use exclamation marks sparingly or preferably not at all
• Avoid using words like got / gotten / thing – except in dialogue
• Avoid passive language.  He had been to the shop. He went to the shop.
• Minimise long blocks of text without dialogue
• Ascertain point of view and tense in opening paragraph/s.
• OK (correct) okay (colloquial) NEVER ok or Ok
• Learn how to do the long dash on your computer and use it

 
Correct punctuation for dialogue:
‘That cloud looks like a dragon,’ said Ben. Comma inside quotation mark/lower case s for said
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‘Look at the strange cloud.’ Obviously frightened, Ben pointed to the sky. Dialogue doesn’t run on, so use a full stop before the quotation mark and a capital O for Obviously

‘I’m scared,’ said Ben, ‘and I want to go home.’ Note the use of commas and lower case because sentence runs on with ‘said Ben’ in the middle

Ben suddenly yelled, ‘Look at that!’ If speech tag comes before dialogue use a comma before the quotation mark.
Jude Aquilina, 2018