Interruption in dialogue with dashes?

yosoya said:

Lame example, but let's say you have a construction like this:

"Well, that's not--" X scratched the back of his neck. "--what I meant."

vs.

"Well, that's not--" X scratched the back of his neck, "--what I meant."

I think the second can't be correct, because X scratching his neck is an action, and not equivalent to 'he said', but I think the period in the first sentence looks weird too.

What do you think?

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I think the second one is correct.

I'd leave out the second set of dashes. They aren't needed, and rally mess up flow and punctuation.

I would have thought it would be ellipses is a circumstance like that. It's not an interruption as such.

"If I press this button..." Bob said with a shrug, "...will the Earth blow up?"

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.
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Um, I have no immediate plans to blow up the Earth.

Sage said:

if you're going to interrupt a sentence of dialogue with something other than a dialogue tag, it needs dashes on both ends of the interruption.

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Yes, and further, whether the dashes go inside or outside the quotation marks depends on whether there is a pause or break at that point in the speaker's words.

"Well, that's not"--X scratched the back of his neck--"what I meant."

"Sometimes you can be such a--" she struggled to find the right word "--gobemouche."

It's such a bad sentence and such a misuse of the dash that it's hard to answer. It's like you're trying to build a metal door out of wood and asking us where to put the doorknob.

The sentence could be rephrased so there's no break in the flow of dialogue.

Dashes usually indicate the current speaker's dialogue is externally interrupted by, say, another speaker - not hesitation or pauses.

In dialogue it can be helpful to remember that the most effective dialogue is usually where speakers feel, think, act and then speak - in that specific order, keeping that order if two or more of these items are involved. And speakers generally respond to the last item in the previous speaker's list, whether that be dialogue or an action.

To put the scratching action at the end of this dialogue renders the action less meaningful than when it's placed before the relative dialogue.

Suggested rephrasing -

X scratched his neck. "Well...that's not what I meant."

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Angry Guy said:

I would have thought it would be ellipses is a circumstance like that. It's not an interruption as such.

"If I press this button..." Bob said with a shrug, "...will the Earth blow up?"

.
.
.
Um, I have no immediate plans to blow up the Earth.

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Ellipses in dialogue imply trailing off, while m-dashes imply a more abrupt cessation, as if the person were cut off or stopped speaking suddenly for some reason.

If you are just tagging the dialog, then this would be appropriate.

"If I press the button," Bob said with a shrug, "will the Earth blow up?"

Here's an article on dialog punctuation.

http://theeditorsblog.net/2010/12/08/punctuation-in-dialogue/