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“That seems like an odd way to use punctuation,” Tom said. “What harm would there be in using quotation marks at the end of every paragraph?” “Oh, that’s not all that complicated,” J.R. answered. “If you closed quotes at the end of every paragraph, then you would need to reidentify the speaker with every subsequent paragraph. “Say a narrative was ...

A corresponding conversation in English might go something like this: ― You should get yourself a girlfriend! ― A girlfriend? What’s that?! It’s more sarcasm than irony, and the reply is often “deadpanned”.

The lack of closing quotation marks is a convenient clue for the reader that the quotation goes on beyond the end of the paragraph. The addition of quotation marks at the start of each paragraph within a multi-paragraph quotation ensures that a casual or forgetful reader is reminded that the paragraph he is reading is (part of) a quotation, which he might ...

Another idiomatic option (at least in British English) would be: You should get yourself a girlfriend. Sorry, never heard of it. The use of the impersonal pronoun "it" is part of the humour; it indicates that the speaker not only has no girlfriend, but doesn't even understand the concept that a "girlfriend" might be a type of human being.

When you are quoting multiple paragraphs, closing quotations go only at the end of the entire quotation. Beginning quotes should be placed at the beginning of each paragraph, though; otherwise it would be hard to tell at a glance that the quotation was still ongoing. Common Errors by Brians (one of my new favorites) says it this way: When quoting a long ...

The rule is in place to allow for successive dialog. Two quoted paragraphs in succession with no end quotation mark in the first paragraph are a continued sentiment stated by one person that requires a paragraph break, whereas if there were an end quotation mark, the two paragraphs would be quotes said by different people. Its primary purpose is in ...

OP's second version is standard usage, which is why @Barrie calls it the "uninverted form". But note he's only referring to inversion of subject - verb (the object here being the quoted speech). The most common structure for English sentences is subject - verb - object... Joe said "The sky is blue". ...and the most common "sentence inversion" is ...

If you want to turn the sarcasm back on the person giving obvious advice, you could say something like A girlfriend? I didn't get the memo. or A girlfriend? I must have missed a meeting! or A girlfriend? Gee, why didn't I think of that? Any of these implies that the advice is so obvious that the person giving it is either stupid or callous ...

Mostly they're not recorded. They're called Hesitation Markers, or various equivalent names. They are the various sounds people make when they're hesitating to think of what to say next, or to remember a word, or just because they've drawn a blank. Emitting one of these markers signals an intention to hold the floor, and to try to keep one's conversation ...

As I understand things, you place a comma after the interruption if the first quotation was not a complete sentence, and a period if it was. The rule really is as simple as you inferred. The stylistic element comes in where you have to decide how you would punctuate a quotation if it wasn't to be broken. By example: "My most worthy adversary, we meet ...

If you're talking about the name for the text that says who is speaking, in screenplays these seem to be called "character cues" or "character names". I've checked several formatting guides for screenplays, and those that have a term for this use one or the other of these.

How about: John told Sean that he should let John help him. It gets a bit complicated because there are two singular males, but otherwise it is fairly straightforward. Other ways of rendering the imperative in indirect speech could be chosen instead, like "must"; or the entire "let" construction could be done away with in a less literal version: ...