He said, she said

Dialogue is hard. Not just figuring out what the characters say, but also how to communicate that in text. How should we format it? What punctuation do we use? Do we need dialogue tags—and which ones do we choose? There are a lot of things to remember, and it’s hard to sift the actual grammatical rules from conventions and people’s stylistic preferences.

Ultimately, there is far more to dialogue than I can cover in a single post, so for now we’ll start with just one of those topics: dialogue tags. For those not familiar with the term, a dialogue tag is what we call the text indicating who is speaking the dialogue, and sometimes how it is delivered. They consist of a noun or pronoun indicating who is speaking, and a verb describing the speech (sometimes these will be noun or verb phrases, i.e. multiple words performing that singular function, but now we’re verging on hair-splitting territory).

Is “said” really dead?

By far the most common verb used in dialogue tags is the word “said”, and it is also one of the first we instinctively turn to. Think about the last time you told a story to someone in a casual setting: you probably used “said” quite often whenever you mentioned someone speaking.

And then came that ever-so-familiar phenomenon we’ve encountered in other Grammar Talk posts: specific advice for beginner writers being applied well beyond its scope of usefulness. Teachers of writing noticed that their students were using “said” in pretty much every dialogue tag, and set about encouraging a more varied use of verbs—you’ve probably seen lists of alternatives to “said” stuck up on classroom walls or popping up around the internet:

• advised
• asserted
• began
• chimed in
• commented
• concluded
• contended
• explained
• expressed
• imparted
• implied
• noted
• observed
• put forth
• remarked
• replied
• revealed
• spoke up
• stated
• suggested
• uttered
• volunteered

…And so on. These lists can be quite useful to scan if you want a more interesting word but can’t quite think of the one you want, and there are some very comprehensive ones out there.

However.

This very sensible drive to expand people’s writing vocabulary got a bit out of hand, leading to the idea that “said is dead” and that you should never use it all if you could help it. This resulted in newer writers thinking that they were being asked to write like this:

“Mary, have you taken the bins out yet?” John enquired.

“Oh no,” cried Mary, “I completely forgot!”

“Why don’t you take them out now?” John suggested.

“I’ll take them out for a dollar!” Mikey piped up from the corner.

“Not if I can help it,” Mary uttered.

It certainly is colourful, but it takes you out of the action somewhat because all of those exciting and different words are also really distracting. Although “said” can get a bit monotonous if it’s overused, it is very useful in its invisibility: the reader’s eyes will glide over it seamlessly, because “said” is precisely what they expect. So it may be preferable to save the colourful actions for the moments where you really want them to stand out. If you do want a bit of added detail, you could always attach a related phrase or clause to the end of the dialogue tag:

“Not if I can help it,” Mary said with a huff.

“You never let me have any fun,” said Mikey, who was sitting upside down in his chair.

Or, alternatively…

Another thing to consider is whether you actually need to tag your line of dialogue at all; when characters are in conversation with each other, or when they’re performing other actions in the scene, it can often be quite clear from context who is speaking:

John poked his head into the living room.

“Mary, have you taken the bins out yet?”

“Oh no, I completely forgot!”

“Why don’t you take them out now?”

Removing unnecessary dialogue tags can help keep the flow of conversation smooth, especially if you have a long section that is primarily dialogue. It is important, however, to make sure that it is as clear who is speaking as you think—there have been numerous occasions where I’ve been reading a chunk of dialogue in a novel and lost track of the speaker. So don’t go for too long without some sort of identifier, whether it’s a dialogue tag, a related action, saying someone’s name, or some other individual marker.

This may be all I have to say on dialogue tags, but there will be more about other aspects of dialogue in the future, sprinkled in amongst other fascinating features of written language. Let me know if there are any particular topics you’d like to read my thoughts on!