Dialogue tags
Ten kinds of tag, with the cost of each one attached. Most substitutes for said are worse than said. The question worth asking is which ones are not.
What a dialogue tag is, and what a substitute costs
"He is not coming back," she laughed bitterly. Two things have gone wrong there before a reader has done any work of their own: you cannot laugh a sentence, and bitterly hands over the feeling that the line underneath was supposed to carry. Take both away and you get "He is not coming back," she said. The bitterness is still in the room. It is the reader's to find rather than yours to label.
A dialogue tag is the handful of words that name a speaker and do nothing else, two or three of them, whose whole job is to be read without being noticed. She said. Asked Holmes. Speech tags and speaker tags are the same thing under other names, and the lists that collect the verbs themselves call them dialogue words or dialogue verbs. Said manages the job better than the alternatives because use has worn it smooth. Put grated or hissed in its place and the word steps forward to be admired, at the moment the line under it needed your attention.
The cost is countable, and Conan Doyle is a good place to count it. Go through the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and said takes 339 attributions, with cried and remarked next at 52 each. Ejaculated, the verb he gets mocked for, appears four times. A substitute works by being unusual, so a page of substitutes has nothing left to spend.
The classroom version arrives as a poster headed Said Is Dead, with two hundred verbs sorted by feeling. It answers a problem no reader has. The eye skips said. A substitution list buys you a manuscript where every speech comes with its label attached, which is the same instinct as the filtered perception on the point of view page, and it costs a reader the same thing: the chance to work the scene out alone.
Ten kinds of dialogue tag, and what each does to the line
| Kind of tag | Tags | What it does to the line | Use it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain attribution | said, asked, replied | Disappears. The reader takes the name and stays in the scene | By default, and for most lines of speech in the book |
| Volume | shouted, whispered, murmured | Adds one fact the words cannot carry, and spends a beat of attention on it | The room matters: a whisper in a crowd, a shout through a door |
| Emotion named outright | snapped, pleaded, sneered | Tells the reader how to take a line that should have managed on its own | The words say the opposite of what the speaker means |
| Manner and tone | drawled, muttered, said flatly | Slows the line and puts the speaker's face in front of the words | A first appearance, or an accent you have decided not to spell |
| Speed and interruption | blurted, cut in, trailed off | Marks timing that punctuation cannot show | Somebody is talked over, or gives themselves away by answering too fast |
| Impossible tags | laughed, smiled, breathed | Asks a mouth to produce speech in a way it does not | Rarely. A laugh is not a way of saying words, and a reader hears the seam |
| Adverb-carrying tags | said angrily, said softly | Puts the feeling in the tag, where a reader has to be told it | Hardly ever. Cut the adverb, then rewrite the line if the feeling went with it |
| Action instead of a tag | She set the cup down. "Fine." | Attributes and times the pause at once, and costs a beat of pace | The gesture says something the words do not |
| No tag at all | Two speakers, alternating | Reads fastest of anything here, until a reader loses count | Two speakers only, and for as long as a reader can keep count |
| Speech-act tags | explained, admitted, added, agreed | Summarises what the line achieved before a reader has judged it | Rarely. If the line does not read as an admission, calling it one does not make it so |
Nine of these ten cost something. A list of a hundred substitutes with no judgement attached is a thesaurus in a craft costume. Punctuation is a separate subject, tabled on the dialogue page.
Three passages, read for the tag
Three tags at work in books old enough to check against the text. One plain, one under a marked voice, and one that is not a tag at all.
1Two saids and an adverb
A burglar is arrested and is perfectly polite about it. The tags stay out of the way of what the men are saying.
Four lines, four treatments: Doyle uses said twice and you can read the exchange without noticing either one. The adverb on the first is doing real work, because blandly is the joke. Holmes has been hit by a man with a revolver moments earlier and he sounds like a waiter. The last line has no tag at all, because two men are alternating and none is needed.
Try this. Find a four-line exchange in your draft and count the treatments. If all four match, one of them is carrying nothing.
"It's no use, John Clay," said Holmes blandly. "You have no chance at all.""So I see," the other answered with the utmost coolness. "I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails.""There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Holmes."Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you."
2A plain tag under a marked voice
Joseph complains about the new boy. The tag is one neutral word, because the speech has already told you everything.
Answered is as flat as a tag gets, and it is the right choice, because everything a tag might have told you is already inside the quotation marks. Class. Region. Temper. The man's opinion of the boy and of the boy's mother. Brontë spells the accent, which is the part most editors would now argue with: phonetic spelling slows a reader and can read as mockery. The transferable half is the structure. Mark the voice inside the speech, by word order and by what the speaker picks out, and the tag gets to be one word long.
Try this. Take a character with an accent you have been spelling. Put the marks in the word order instead and leave the tag plain.
"Wah!" answered Joseph, "yon dainty chap says he cannut ate 'em. But I guess it's raight! His mother wer just soa -- we wer a'most too mucky to sow t' corn for makking her breead."
3The beat that replaces the tag
A sergeant has caught a woman's dress on his spur in a dark plantation. The line she loses her temper on carries no tag at all.
What attributes that outburst is the sentence after it: She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way. It does something no tag can. It puts a length on the line, and it shows her losing an argument with a spur while she wins the one with the man. Hardy then leaves the reply bare, because two voices alternating carry themselves. Notice the plain he said in the first line. It holds the exchange steady so that the untagged lines can move.
Try this. Find a line where a character loses their temper. Delete the tag and give them something to do with their hands.
"I like you the better for that incivility, miss," he said."I should have liked -- I wish -- you had never shown yourself to me by intruding here!" She pulled again, and the gathers of her dress began to give way like liliputian musketry."I deserve the chastisement your words give me. But why should such a fair and dutiful girl have such an aversion to her father's sex?"
One line, with the tag in four places
The same sentence, moved. Read all four aloud before the notes, because the ear settles this faster than a rule does.
"You could have told me," she said, "before I signed it."
She said, "You could have told me before I signed it."
"You could have told me before I signed it," she said.
"You could have told me before I signed it."
- The tag inside the line
- The break lands where the speaker takes a breath, so the last three words arrive on their own and carry the grievance. White's rule in The Elements of Style is to put the tag where the break would come in speech, and to find it by saying the sentence aloud.
- The tag in front
- Naming the speaker first flattens the line, because a reader is told who before what. It has one real use: in a scene with three people, this is how you stop a reader guessing.
- The tag at the end
- The default, and close to invisible. The line lands. Then the label. If most of your dialogue looks like this, it is probably fine.
- No tag
- Fastest of the four and the one that fails hardest. It works while a reader can still count the alternation, and the moment they cannot they go back up the page, which is the one thing a scene cannot afford.
Three passes over dialogue you have already drafted
One pass, one thing to look for, and no judging the writing while you count. The third is easier once the first two have thinned the page.
Circle every tag that is not said
Count them against the number of speeches. Doyle runs at about two in five, and he reaches for cried and remarked without apology, so treat that as a ceiling rather than a target.
Delete every adverb after a tag
All of them, without deciding first. Then read each line back. Where the line still lands, the adverb was decoration. Where the feeling went out with it, you have found a line to rewrite, which is what the adverb was hiding.
Cut the tags in the fastest run
Find the longest stretch of two people talking and take out every tag. Read it, and mark where you lose the thread. That number of lines is your budget for the rest of the book.
The same exchange with an editor on it
An argument in a kitchen, drafted with the tags doing the acting. Then again with the lines doing it. The note is from Elena Cruz, a line editor inside Draftly.
Drag to compare original and revised text
Questions & Answers
- What is a dialogue tag?
- The short phrase attached to a line of speech that names who is speaking, as in she said or asked Holmes. Attribution is its only job.
- What are some overused dialogue tags?
- The ones that name a feeling the line should carry: snapped, hissed, sneered, pleaded, growled, breathed. Two more get overused without being noticed. Any tag with an adverb bolted on, and the impossible ones, where a character laughs or smiles a sentence rather than saying it.
- Should you use other words instead of said?
- Sometimes, and less often than the lists suggest. A substitute is worth it when it carries a fact the words cannot, and it stops being worth it the moment it names the emotion.
- What is the difference between a dialogue tag and an action beat?
- A tag is a phrase of attribution punctuated as one sentence with the speech. A beat is a separate sentence of action in the same paragraph, which attributes by proximity, as in he set the cup down and then the line of speech, and a beat can also put a length on a pause, which no tag can do, at the cost of a beat of pace.
- Where should a dialogue tag go in a sentence?
- At the end for most lines, where it is close to invisible. Inside the line when the speaker would pause there anyway, which is something you settle by reading it aloud rather than by rule. At the front only when a reader would otherwise guess.
- How do you punctuate a dialogue tag?
- A comma inside the quotation marks where a full stop would go, then the tag in lower case: "I know," she said. A question mark replaces the comma and the tag still stays lower case. Every case is tabled on [[page:guides/dialogue|the dialogue page]].
Make the speech carry it
Voice and speech is one of the eight core fields on the character profile template, next to a verbal habit and how formal they are.
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