Study Resource: How to punctuate dialogue in Russian?

• When the sentence starts with the quote, follow it with a dash ( – ).

  “Мы на пороге важнейшего открытия!” – сказал профессор.

  “my na paROgye vazhNYEYsheva atKRYtiya” - skaZAL praFYEsar

  “We are on the verge of a major discovery!” said the professor.

  Notice that after the dash, we use a lowercase letter.

  Rather than using quotes, you can just use dashes on either side of the quote:

  – Мы на пороге важнейшего открытия! – сказал профессор.

  - my na paROgye vazhNYEYsheva atKRYtiya! - skaZAL praFYEsar

  “We are on the verge of a major discovery!” said the professor.

• When the sentence ends with the quote, introduce the quote with a colon ( : ).

  Профессор сказал: “Мы на пороге важнейшего открытия!”

  praFYEsar skaZAL: “my na paROgye vazhNYEYsheva atKRYtiya!”

  The professor said, “We are on the verge of a major discovery!”

  Notice that the quote begins with a capital letter.

  Rather than using quotes, you can use a colon and present the quote on a new line, beginning with a dash:

  Профессор сказал:
  – Мы на пороге важнейшего открытия!

  praFYEsar skaZAL my na paROgye vazhNYEYsheva atKRYtiya

  The professor said, “We are on the verge of a major discovery!”

In Russian, you may see quotation marks written in a number of ways.

• “...” → more common if using a US keyboard

• «…» → more formal, common in published writing

• „…“ → usually for quotations inside quotation marks

A direct quote should be in quotes, unless it is set off by dashes in the ways we saw illustrated above.

• If the quote ends with an exclamation point or a question mark, that will always be inside the quotes (or the dashes).

  «xyz!» “xyz!” „xyz!“ – xyz! –
  «xyz?» “xyz?” „xyz?“ – xyz? –

• If the quote ends with a period or is not a complete sentence, the punctuation will be outside the quotes (or the dashes).

  • If the quote does not end the sentence, replace the period with a comma.

    «xyz», – … “xyz”, – „xyz“, – – xyz, –

  • If the quote does end the sentence, use a period.

    …: «xyz». …: “xyz”. …: „xyz“. – xyz.