Of ‘said’ and Dialogue Tags in Writing
Today, I ran across a Twitter thread about writerly use of the word ‘said’:
https://x.com/APoetForThePyre/status/1794895108581859794
As a writer, I have my opinions about this, and since it has been a long, long time since I offered thoughts on the unwritten rules of writing, I thought I would explore the matter here.
Basically, the vast majority of the time, ‘said’ and ‘asked’ get the job done. They can be replaced when it is not clear from the dialogue itself what is going on… but generally speaking, the attention should be on the dialogue, and not on how the dialogue is spoken.
- “I’m sorry,” said Bob.
- “I’m sorry,” Bob whimpered.
- “I’m sorry,” croaked Bob.
All three of these are perfectly fine, depending on the circumstance. The last two add some context to Bob’s apology, but it is the sort of thing that needs to be done sparingly. You don’t want this back-to-back:
“I hate you,” Alice snarled.
“I’m sorry,” Bob whimpered.
That is the point at which the dialogue tags start drawing attention to themselves. And you don’t want dialogue tags to draw attention to themselves… which is why ‘said’ is so nice. It lets the spoken words shine without offering fancy distraction.
But even better than ‘said’ is omitting dialogue tags altogether, because you have set up a scenario where it is clear who is speaking, and how.
Alice stormed into Bob’s office.
“I fucking hate you.”
Bob sat with his head in his hands.
“I’m so sorry.”
We know which dialogue is being spoken by whom. No need for ‘said’, much less fancier tags.
A Phuulish Fellow 
The finest sentence in American prose came from breaking this rule: “Shut up,” he explained.
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I remember finding it profoundly weird back in school being chided for using ‘said’ too much, then reading published books and seeing these authors use ‘said’ all the damn time.
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If only writing was this easy! I took a random look at Pride and Prejudice. “Saids” abound, sometimes varied to “said she”, with the occasional “cried” (meaning “exclaimed”). But, as you say, the dialogue often flows without tags.
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