Place the required punctuation around one direct-speech construction.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere.
Practise it now
Three marks are missing. Pick one from the tray, then tap the hole it belongs in.
This exercise practises punctuate direct speech alongside its own main skill, Punctuation.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Worked example: Speech marks
Worked example: Which sentence punctuates the direct speech correctly?
Jonah asked. "Could I have a spare pencil?"
Jonah asked, "could I have a spare pencil?"
Jonah asked, Could I have a spare pencil?
Jonah asked, "Could I have a spare pencil?"
Answer: Jonah asked, "Could I have a spare pencil?"
How you get there
Only the words actually spoken belong inside the speech marks, and the mark that closes them goes inside too, so the correct version is: Jonah asked, "Could I have a spare pencil?" Each of the others breaks one of those rules: the spoken words carry no speech marks at all, so nothing shows which words were said aloud; the spoken words start in lower case, but speech always begins with a capital letter; the full stop after "asked" cuts the reporting clause off from the speech it introduces.
Why the other answers tempt
The mark that closes the speech goes INSIDE the speech marks, never after them, and a reporting clause such as "called Sam" continues the sentence rather than starting a new one, so its verb keeps a small letter.
If they are stuck, say this
Check three things in each option: the speech marks wrap only the words that were said, the mark that ends those words is inside them, and the reporting clause is part of the same sentence.
Three marks are missing. Pick one from the tray, then tap the hole it belongs in.
This engine’s own main skill is Punctuation. It practises punctuate direct speech alongside it.
Punctuation is the writing down of your voice. Read "Slow down Ben you will trip" aloud and you will hear two small pauses and one urgent ending. When you speak straight to somebody by name, that name gets a comma on each side to fence it off from the rest, which is why Ben needs one before and one after: without them, "Slow down Ben" sounds like Ben is the thing being slowed down. The ending is chosen by tone, and a warning shouted at somebody about to fall takes an exclamation mark rather than a full stop. Say the sentence, mark the pauses, then choose the ending that matches the feeling.
What to say if they get stuck
Read it out loud. Every place your voice pauses is a hole that wants a comma.
Ben is being spoken to, not talked about. A name you are addressing gets fenced off on both sides.
The last hole ends the whole thing. Is this a calm statement or a shout of warning?
How punctuate direct speech differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: place the required punctuation around one direct-speech construction, and it stops where excludes rewriting dialogue content.
Questions parents ask about punctuate direct speech
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Place the required punctuation around one direct-speech construction. It is one of 41 named English skills in the 11+, in the punctuation strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
The mark that closes the speech goes INSIDE the speech marks, never after them, and a reporting clause such as "called Sam" continues the sentence rather than starting a new one, so its verb keeps a small letter. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Check three things in each option: the speech marks wrap only the words that were said, the mark that ends those words is inside them, and the reporting clause is part of the same sentence.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes rewriting dialogue content. A question past that line is testing a different named English skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The punctuation strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to punctuate direct speech are punctuate a fronted adverbial, punctuate a list and punctuate parenthesis. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Punctuation Pinball, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to punctuate direct speech, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation are four different problems
A free diagnostic separates them, so practice goes where the gap actually is rather than on whichever one is easiest to set.
