You wanna know what’s so useful you don’t even realize it? Opening quotes.
“The door is behind the bookshelf,” said Bob. But it’s perilous.”
Look at that for a second. Is that intuitive at all?
Nope! But omitting the second quotes was quite useful when typesetting was difficult, paper was scarce, and pagecount was king. It’s still hanging around.
“Opening quotations are mandatory,” I said. “Even after dialogue tags.”