![]() ![]() The “Said Haters” argue that people do not simply say words rather, they whisper, yell, remark, argue, and so forth. The other side, mainly composed of middle and high school English teachers around the world argue, “Said is Dead!” One side argues that the only dialogue tags necessary are said and asked. There's a debate on how often to deviate from using a simple “said” to mark dialogue tags. Notice how you can either include the dialogue tag (“Ben said”) or just use the action itself as the dialogue tag. “Yeah, you too,” Ben said, biting the inside of his lip. If you are trying to insert action or description, you can use it as the dialogue tag. If you are writing with multiple (three or more) characters, use only enough dialogue tags to clearly indicate who is speaking. The second example, which removes the the second set of dialogue tags, reads faster and is simpler. If the characters are previously introduced, the tags aren't needed. In this case the dialogue tags are almost as long as the dialogue itself, and they become unnecessary and distracting. For example, this exchange has too many tags if there are only two people in the conversation: If you are writing short dialogue, where each line is only a few words, you can use fewer dialogue tags. How often do you need to tell the reader who is speaking? There are a few different rules to decide how often you use dialogue tags. I came across this question recently in a writing group. ![]() A comma is used after the dialogue tag, OUTSIDE of quotation marks, to reintroduce the dialogue.A comma is used before the dialogue tag and goes INSIDE quotation marks.“The car lights ,” she explained, “ aren't bright enough to drive at night.” When dialogue tags are used in the middle of dialogue it looks like this: End the dialogue tag with appropriate punctuation.Unless the dialogue tag begins with a proper noun, it is not capitalized.Punctuation still goes INSIDE quotation marks.“Are you coming to my party ?” asked Meghan. “Are you coming to my party ?” Meghan asked. ![]() When dialogue tags are used after the dialogue it looks like this:
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