When to Use “Said”

There’s a myth that you should never use the verb say in your dialogue. Certainly there are more exciting, muscular verbs out there, but too often writers resort to a thesaurus when a simple said would be more effective.

Cefusa, a legendary beast which leaves human footprints. France c.1290

Compare the following:

  “Are you sure this is where you saw it?” wondered Shazad.
  “Yes, I told you. It’ll pass by any minute, trust me,” replied Mae.
  “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that this branch has been poking me in the butt for like twenty minutes now,” complained Shazad.
  “Wait! I hear something!” observed Mae.

  “Are you sure this is where you saw it?” said Shazad.
  “Yes, I told you. It’ll pass by any minute, trust me,” said Mae.
  “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that this branch has been poking me in the butt for like twenty minutes now,” said Shazad.
  “Wait! I hear something!” said Mae.

While neither example is ideal, the speech tags in the second example are less distracting than those in the first. Said has a way of fading into the background, while verbs like replied and observed can sound odd or stilted. You want your reader’s attention to move smoothly through the scene, not get snagged on awkward or unnecessary word choices.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should always and only use said. Other verbs can be more effective when they tell us something important about the dialogue.

  “Are you sure this is where you saw it?” whispered Shazad.
  “Wait! I hear something!” hissed Mae.

Here both speech tags expand on the dialogue by telling us how it was spoken. And both are in keeping with the scene, not shoehorned in just to provide word variety.

Apocalypse beast. France 1220–1270

Of course, you could always dispense with speech tags altogether.

  “Are you sure this is where you saw it?”
  “Yes, I told you. It’ll pass by any minute, trust me.”
  “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that this branch has been poking me in the butt for like twenty minutes now.”
  “Wait! I hear something!”

This can work well where you want a quick pace. But unless you’ve already introduced the characters, the reader won’t be able to picture them. And if you add a third speaker, things get really confusing.

  “Is that it?”
  “Shh!”
  “Oh my God, you were right! It’s really real!”
  “Excuse me. Do you mind giving me a little privacy?”
  “Oh, uh, sorry.”
  “Yeah, sorry, dude.”

You can still let your readers know who’s speaking without using speech tags. The characters’ actions, appearing on the same lines as their dialogue, cue readers as to who’s saying what. (For more on this, see Dialogue and Paragraph Breaks.)

  Shazad leaned forward. “Is that it?”
  “Shh!” Mae poked his shoulder warningly.
  His jaw dropped. “Oh my God, you were right! It’s really real!”
  The sasquatch glared at them through the tree branches. “Excuse me. Do you mind giving me a little privacy?”
  Shazad cleared his throat. “Oh, uh, sorry.”
  Mae winced. “Yeah, sorry, dude.”

This method keeps some of the punchiness of the dialogue-only approach while giving the reader more information. The scene is a lot more vivid when we know how the characters are moving and reacting in between speaking.

Sasquatch and her son by Sarah Goodreau

But any sentence structure repeated too often will bore your reader, so you want to use some or all of these methods in combination. Remember, too, that you can put speech tags or actions in the middle of dialogue to switch things up.

  “Are you sure this is where you saw it?” whispered Shazad.
  “Yes, I told you,” said Mae. “It’ll pass by any minute, trust me.”
  “It’s not that I don’t believe you.” He shifted awkwardly. “It’s just that this branch has been poking me in the butt for like twenty minutes now.”
  Mae froze. “Wait! I hear something!”
  “Is that it?”
  “Shh!” she hissed.
  His jaw dropped. “Oh my God, you were right! It’s really real!”
  The sasquatch glared at them through the tree branches. “Excuse me,” she rumbled. “Do you mind giving me a little privacy?”
  “Oh, uh, sorry,” said Shazad.
  Mae winced. “Yeah, sorry, dude.”

What we can learn from the “never use said” myth is that no writing rule should be applied universally. A screwdriver may be an invaluable tool, but you wouldn’t use it to hang a picture. Writing tips are tools, and choosing the right one for each job is what the craft of writing is all about. Next time you’re enjoying a good book, notice how the author has put together their dialogue. I’m guessing somewhere in there they probably used said.

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How to Punctuate Dialogue

When you’re trying to decide which punctuation to put in your dialogue and where, start by looking at your sentence as a whole.

"That's not my ocelot."

For stand-alone dialogue, punctuation is pretty easy: just throw everything inside a pair of quotation marks.

• “That’s not my ocelot.”

When the dialogue is part of a larger sentence (for example, when it’s joined by an attributive phrase like “she said,” also called a dialogue tag or speech tag), put a period at the end of the sentence and put a comma inside the quotes where you’d otherwise put a period.

• “That’s not my ocelot,” she said.

You can only use one period per sentence, so save it for the grand finale. On the other hand, your dialogue should always start with a capital letter, even when it’s in the middle of a sentence.

• She said, “That’s not my ocelot.”
• Salomé drawled, “Fancy meeting you here,” and dove out the window.

In the first example, the period is doing double duty for the dialogue and the whole sentence, so you only need one. The same is true of question marks, exclamation points, and em dashes (used when speech is broken off or interrupted).

• Ye-jun said, “What the hell’s an ocelot?”
• He yelled, “That’s a wild animal, not a pet!”
• Ye-jun asked, “Is that—” He was abruptly cut off.

Unlike periods, however, these marks can also sit in the middle of a sentence.

• “Do mermaids get pruny fingers?” asked Rhyddian.
• “Don’t stay in too long!” he yelled.
• “Can mermaids—” he began, before thinking better of it.

“Do mermaids get pruny fingers?” asked Rhyddian.

Dialogue Plus Action

Sometimes speech tags muscle into the middle of a piece of dialogue. Set off the interruption with commas, the same way you would in a sentence without quotation marks.

• Kansas, she says, is the name of the star.
• “The map,” said Javier, “is incomplete.”

Note how the commas stick to the preceding word, as commas are wont to do, tucking themselves inside the quotes with map and outside with Javier. Also note the lower case is. The word isn’t starting a new sentence of dialogue, so it isn’t capitalized.

• “The map,” said Javier. “Is it complete?”

Now Javier’s dialogue has been broken into two sentences: “The map. Is it complete?” This gives his speech a faster pace and more abrupt tone.

• “The map.” Javier frowned. “It’s incomplete.”

“Javier frowned” isn’t a speech tag—you can’t frown words—but a description of Javier’s action. So it can’t piggyback on the dialogue; it needs to be its own sentence.

• “The map is incomplete.” Javier frowned.
• He stood and began to pace. “We’ll need Salomé’s tattoo to find the Lost Kingdom.”

Suppose we wanted Javier’s action to happen in the middle of his dialogue. Then we could set it off with a pair of em dashes.

• “The map”—Javier frowned—“is incomplete.”
• “We’ll need Salomé’s tattoo”—he stood and began to pace—“to find the Lost Kingdom.”

Note the lack of commas. The em dashes are enough punctuation here—commas would be overkill.

“The map,” said Javier, “is incomplete.”

Period or Comma?

A speech tag will hitch itself to a piece of dialogue using a comma, while an action phrase needs either its own sentence or a pair of dashes. But it’s not always easy to tell the difference between a speech tag and an action phrase. If you’re not sure, look at the verb. Is it some kind of verbalization—a way of speaking, no matter how unintelligible?

• “No cherubim are allowed in the bathroom,” Mira grumbled/mumbled/muttered/stuttered.
• “No cherubim are allowed in the bathroom.” Mira winced/shuddered/smiled/rolled her eyes.

The actions in the second example all happen apart from the dialogue, so they must form a separate sentence. If you want to convey action and dialogue happening simultaneously, you can combine your action with a speech tag.

• Mira rolled her eyes and said, “No cherubim are allowed in the bathroom.”
• “No cherubim are allowed in the bathroom,” said Mira with a wince.
• Smiling, Mira said, “No cherubim are allowed in the bathroom.”

Of course, some verbs can convey either action or speech.

• “I’m no adventurer,” he sighed.
• “I’m no adventurer.” He sighed.

The first example describes sighed dialogue, the second, dialogue followed by a sigh. A period or a comma creates a different sequence of events.

In your literary explorations, you may come across actions unrelated to speech being used as dialogue tags. Is this kosher? Can a character, for example, shrug a sentence?

• “I dunno,” he shrugged.

Call it artistic license. Part of creative writing, after all, is using language in unexpected ways. But we’re not all Shakespeare, so if you want to use this type of construction, be sure you know what rules you’re breaking—and that you have a very good reason.

Semicolons; or A Good Excuse to Quote Jane Austen

The question of how to use semicolons with dialogue is not likely to come up often, but that’s no reason not to quote this elegantly constructed sentence from Pride and Prejudice:

• “Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times them ill.”

A little rearranging may clarify this structure:

• “Kitty has no discretion in her coughs; she times them ill,” said her father.

Alternatively, Austen could have used two sentences instead of one.

• “Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father. “She times them ill.”

But where would be the fun in that?

“Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she times them ill.”

Punctuation is a powerful tool: used well, it can convey a world of information to your readers without their even being aware of it.

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