Dialogue Tags: Everything You Need to Know to Look Like a Professional Writer

Dialogue tags are commonly misused with young writers, and can often be a crutch for you to lean on. If you’re using dialogue tags wrong, you’re stunting your growth as a writer. Learning the correct way to use dialogue tags will not only add another tool to your writer’s toolbox, but your work will read as professional, authoritative writing does.

Let’s chat about everything you need to know about dialogue tags.

What are dialogue tags?

So, what are dialogue tags? They’re the part of the quotation that states something is being said. Check out the example here:

“Honey,” he said, “I’m home!”

The dialogue tag here is ‘said.’

Here’s another example:

“Honey,” she yelled, “I’m home!”

Here, the dialogue tag is ‘yelled.’

Let’s also take a look at what is not a dialogue tag.

There is no dialogue tag in the sentence:

“Honey!” She came in through the front door. “I’m home!”

Or in this one:

“Honey!” He smiled. “I’m home!”

Some people may be inclined to say the word ‘smiled’ here is a dialogue tag. Let’s talk about why that isn’t the case.

How to use dialogue tags

You may have noticed from the examples that the first two sentences contain a word that describes the vocals of the dialogue. ‘Said’ and ‘yelled’ both convey how the words are being said. They’re talking strictly about the voice of the character. The words ‘said’ and ‘yelled’ are dependent on the words the character is saying here. It’s part of the same thought from the narrator.

In the last two examples, we get actions from the characters. This is something that they’re doing independently of the words they’re saying. The smile is another thought the narrator is having. The narrator announces the words the character said in quotes, and then tells us the character is smiling. So, ‘smiled’ would not count as a dialogue tag, rather an action.

Other examples of dialogue tags

Before we talk about why ‘said’ is my favorite dialogue tag, let’s look at some other common tags we see in new writers, and if I would use them in my own writing.

‘Accused’

The word accused is pretty common with young writers. You might see it in narration in a sentence like, “He accused me of cheating.” Here, the word accused makes sense and is a-okay to use. However, when used as a dialogue tag, it becomes redundant. Look at the example below.

“You did it!” he accused.

Or:

“It was someone in this room,” she accused all of us.

The words that the character is speaking do the accusing, right? It’s pretty hard for a phrase like “you did it” to not be accusatory.

In a situation like this, the dialogue tag becomes repetitive. We can infer the accusation from what’s in the quotation marks and do not need the narrator to directly tell us the speaker is accusing somebody.

The last thing you want your dialogue tags to become is a crutch for your writing. If you can’t convey the emotion or meaning of the dialogue with a simple tag such as ‘said,’ you’ll want to do some revision work on your dialogue. In this example, if I was relying on the word ‘accused’ to convey the anger or irrationality in the character, then I would spruce up the dialogue and see if it worked with the word ‘said’ instead.

Overall, I would not use the word ‘accused’ as a dialogue tag.

‘Whispered’

Using the dialogue tag ‘whispered’ is very common. We love a good dramatic whisper as readers. This is a tag I would use.

Whispering is a very specific action someone can take. You can’t tell someone is whispering just by what’s in the quotations. If I asked you to pick what phrase I whispered to a friend, versus which one I yelled across the street, could you do it and know for sure that you were right?

Let’s try it!

Phrase 1: “I’ll see you at 6pm”

Phrase 2: “Don’t tell anyone I told you”

My guess is you would assume phrase 1 was yelled and phrase 2 was whispered. But think about these scenarios:

Phrase 1: We were with all the girls, but no one else had been invited to the dinner. “I’ll see you at 6pm,” I whispered.

Phrase 2: She crossed the street, but I realized I hadn’t mentioned this information was a secret. “Don’t tell anyone I told you!” I yelled.

So, here, context around the words is everything, unlike with the word accused.

‘Said’ isn’t dead

If you do a quick search on Pinterest for ‘dialogue tags,’ you’ll see a lot of infographics with lists of hundreds of words to use other than ‘said.’ A lot writer’s are claiming ‘said’ is dead.

That is a death I would never stop mourning.

‘Said’ is one of the most invisible words on the page. What is an invisible word?

Take the word ‘the’ for example. If someone uses ‘the’ in their writing quite literally 5,000 times, you’d never think twice about it. Same with the word ‘a’ or ‘it.’ These words are used so often and are so necessary in the language. They’re also very plain. We don’t notice them in the same way we would notice a strong word like ‘accused.’

So, if you only ever used the tag ‘said,’ it’s pretty likely an average reader would never notice. We’re so used to ‘he said this’ and ‘they said that.’ It flies under the radar.

Don’t believe me? Pick up the closest work of fiction and count how many times they say the word ‘said’ in one conversation compared to other dialogue tags.

Punctuating dialogue tags

How do you punctuate tags? Do you put the period inside the quotes and capitalize the next word? Do you use a comma and leave out the capitalization? And where does the sentence end? Let’s look at some examples from earlier.

I gave you two sentences with the same dialogue.

Sentence 1: “Honey,” he said, “I’m home!”

Sentence 2: “Honey!” He smiled. “I’m home!

Sentence 1 uses a dialogue tag, and sentence 2 does not.

Notice how in sentence 1 we have a comma after the word ‘honey’ and a lowercase ‘h’ in ‘he’. Then we have another comma after ‘said’ and go into the last half of the dialogue. This is how you punctuate with dialogue tags.

Sentence 2 is a bit different. I put an exclamation point after the word ‘honey’ and a capital ‘H’ in ‘he’. Remember how an action is independent of the dialogue? It becomes a second sentence. Just like if in narration you had a simple sentence of “He smiled.” It’s no different with dialogue surrounding it.

Here’s something to complicate things. When using dialogue tags, a comma at the end of the first dialogue section can be replaced by an exclamation point or a question mark. So it can look like this as well:

“Honey!” he said, “I’m home!”

Or

“Honey?” he said, “I’m home!”

You can also change this last one to:

“Honey?” he asked, “I’m home!”

Dialogue tags can be tricky, but I made this visual guide to help you out.

Conclusion

All in all, dialogue tags take a while to get down. We spent a whole semester in my last year of school talking about this off and on. We’d get submissions that used tags incorrectly. I submitted pieces up until the end of the semester with the wrong punctuation around dialogue tags.

It’s good to have this stuff on hand when you’re writing to refer back to. You can grab a visual guide to dialogue tags here to print and keep with you while you write.

Action Steps

Now that you’ve got a better grip on dialogue tags and how to punctuate them, I want you to go through what you’re currently working on and revise some dialogue.

If you’re leaning on a dialogue tag crutch like ‘accused,’ then see if you can bring across the same energy by changing the dialogue and using the word ‘said’ instead.

Edit the punctuation around your dialogue. Notice if you’re using any tags or actions, and punctuate accordingly!

What do you think?

Do you think ‘said’ is dead?

Do you hate the punctuation rules around dialogue tags?

What else did I miss that you’d like to add to the conversation?

You can download a visual guide to help you learn these tricks here.