On dialogue tags

[snoopercharmbrights]

... Is there a generic listing of all the dialogue tags that are used in fiction? ...

Any decent thesaurus will give you one. For US English the Merriam-Webster online one is fine.

... Or, do you people use only the tags that come to your mind as you write?

Mostly.

 

[sr71plt]

Any decent thesaurus will give you one. For US English the Merriam-Webster online one is fine.

Oh, really? You'll find a comprehensive list of them under "dialogue tag" in a thesaurus or a dictionary, will you?

 

[Denise85]

This is what I posted as example of stories with absolutely no tags at all.

 

[cocput]

Any decent thesaurus will give you one. For US English the Merriam-Webster online one is fine.

What I have with me is Oxford's Concise English dictionary, and a Dictionary App in my mobile.

I am thinking of compiling a list on my own now. The online resource sounds much better. Thank you, snooper.

I have issues remembering names, words, etc. If it didn't come out the first time, then I end up using horrible looking replacements.

They were getting used to the presence of one another for some time in silence, before Emily came back to the same question.
Absolutely horrible sentence. For the part in DarkRed, I know there is a word out there. It should have appeared as "They ___ for a while, before...."

If M-W will solve my problem then I will get it asap.

--scorpio

 

[Derroreaper]

I'm confused cocput.

Everything in black, is nice decent English, and then you give us a story example sentence and its garbage?

I think you're fucking with us to be honest...

 

[cocput]

Can I have conflicting body language and words?


I have a scene where Emily is surprised by a revelation, but she doesn't want to express it. I am not in Emily's POV at the beginning of the scene.

"<controversial question>?"

With raised eyebrows, she said, "<plain statement>"


Or, should I convert this to.

"<controversial question>?"

(temporarily switch to Emily's POV and think surprise.) "<plain statement>".

(switch back to old POV.)


--scorpio

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

Can I have conflicting body language and words? ...

Yes, of course you can have anything you like in your story. If you look at the grammar rules, then James Joyce's Ulysses should never have been published because of the lack of punctuation in Molly Bloom's soliloquy, if for nothing else.

... I have a scene where Emily is surprised by a revelation, but she doesn't want to express it. I am not in Emily's POV at the beginning of the scene.

"<controversial question>?"

With raised eyebrows, she said, "<plain statement>"


Or, should I convert this to.

"<controversial question>?"

(temporarily switch to Emily's POV and think surprise.) "<plain statement>".

(switch back to old POV.) ...

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do not switch POV for a tiny section like this. Please do not switch POV at all if possible.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I have never been persuaded by the rule that the only acceptable tag is "said". I have never even been convinced it is a rule rather than the preference of a few stylistic prescriptivists, or an over-reaction to an excessive reliance on more descriptive tags.

One of the best methods of assessing such rules is to test them. Is this what the acknowledged masters of English lit do when they write? Let's find out.

The first dialogue exchange from Tale of Two Cities:

"Wo-ho!" said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!—Joe!"

"Halloa!" the guard replied.

"What o'clock do you make it, Joe?"

"Ten minutes, good, past eleven."

"My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!"

---

Granted, "ejaculated" as a dialogue tag in erotica is antiquated at best and confusing at worst, but what I note about Dickens here is variety.

How about Moby Dick? From the first dialogue exchange:


"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty."

"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?"

"Oh, no," said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't—he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes 'em rare."

"The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he here?"

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

---

Age of Innocence:


"Perhaps," young Thorley hazarded, "she's too unhappy to be left at home."

This was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing people called a "double entendre."

"Well—it's queer to have brought Miss Welland, anyhow," some one said in a low tone, with a side-glance at Archer.

"Oh, that's part of the campaign: Granny's orders, no doubt," Lefferts laughed. "When the old lady does a thing she does it thoroughly."

---

Same pattern in Picture of Dorian Gray. Turn of the Screw. Grapes of Wrath. Ulysses.

These are seven of the first ten classics I grabbed at random. Three books did seem to almost exclusively use "said" as a dialogue tag: Huckleberry Finn (alternated with a vernacular "says"), Old Man and the Sea, and Sound and the Fury.

This is just an author's preference, not a rule. I will trust any of the authors above as an English stylist more than I trust Stephen King, a random editor, or a style book.

 

[sr71plt]

Well, yes, I agree with your premise. But general tastes in reading change. And reader expectation (and face it, we're really talking about what readers are comfortable reading--and thus will support in picking their reads) of today isn't wedded to books from a century or more ago. For example, readers are trending toward works that start out with action today, that have shorter sentences than the classics, and that don't use florid language. So, although I agree with your premise, the examples, I think should be from well-received works a lot more recent than the ones you cite.

(And I'm still waiting for Snooper to point to those lists of dialogue tags in either a dictionary or a thesaurus. )

 

[cocput]

"He'll be here afore long," was the answer.

This is just an author's preference, not a rule. I will trust any of the authors above as an English stylist more than I trust Stephen King, a random editor, or a style book.

I didn't know that we could write like that. That's a new possibility.

A, "A long sentence here," is correct?

Can I go for a, "A long sentence. Period. Then another," as well?

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Well, yes, I agree with your premise. But general tastes in reading change. And reader expectation (and face it, we're really talking about what readers are comfortable reading--and thus will support in picking their reads) of today isn't wedded to books from a century or more ago. For example, readers are trending toward works that start out with action today, that have shorter sentences than the classics, and that don't use florid language. So, although I agree with your premise, the examples, I think should be from well-received works a lot more recent than the ones you cite.

(And I'm still waiting for Snooper to point to those lists of dialogue tags in either a dictionary or a thesaurus. )

I grabbed ones I could find online for easy copying. Feel free to confirm your claim against more recent masters of English prose.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I didn't know that we could write like that. That's a new possibility.

A, "A long sentence here," is correct?

Can I go for a, "A long sentence. Period. Then another," as well?

Well, Melville was writing in a particular vernacular like Twain was. I still found it interesting that Twain saw fit to stick within the "said" construction and Melville didn't.

 

[sr71plt]

I grabbed ones I could find online for easy copying. Feel free to confirm your claim against more recent masters of English prose.

Aren't we talking about your claim, not mine?--and thus for you to substantiate, not me? (especially since I agree with your premise. It's just your examples that I don't think prove much in today's market.)

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Aren't we talking about your claim, not mine?--and thus for you to substantiate, not me? (especially since I agree with your premise. It's just your examples that I don't think prove much in today's market.)

I did substantiate. You made a counterclaim that it might not apply for more recent works. Might be true, but it's just a claim without examples.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I was curious about the answer myself so I looked at a few more recent books. I don't like most modern literary fiction so my library is sparse, but Franzen uses varied tags. So did Nabokov in Lolita. Same with Confederacy of Dunces and Catch-22. Looking more at best sellers, Gaiman and Tom Wolfe use "said". GRR Martin uses a mix. So does Dan Brown. I won't call him a prose stylist but he is a good example of style used in mass fiction.

It's a preference.

 

[sr71plt]

I did substantiate. You made a counterclaim that it might not apply for more recent works. Might be true, but it's just a claim without examples.

No, I said that tastes--even reading tastes--change, and that you can't substantiate what is currently to reading tastes by classics only.

The claim that I was making was that tastes have changed. My claim is different from your claim. You haven't evidenced your claim to me yet, because I don't think your examples are the relevant ones for writers today.

It's OK with me, though, if you want to make claims with largely irrelevant examples for anyone writing today.

And from here, you can argue with yourself. I've made my observation.

 

[_Lynn_]

Any decent thesaurus will give you one. For US English the Merriam-Webster online one is fine.

Mostly.

Oh, really? You'll find a comprehensive list of them under "dialogue tag" in a thesaurus or a dictionary, will you?

Not in the ones I have.

 

[SydneyBlake]

Here's an interesting blog post on this subject.

 

[cocput]

Here's an interesting blog post on this subject.

Thank you.

And I liked what was written about Embellished Dialogue tags as well.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

Oh, really? You'll find a comprehensive list of them under "dialogue tag" in a thesaurus or a dictionary, will you?

Not in the ones I have.

I did say thesaurus, not dictionary. Since it seems necessary to explain:
A dictionary contains definitions of words; a thesaurus contains lists of words synonymous with, or closely related to, particular words.

To use a thesaurus to find "dialogue tags" you need to select a particular word, in this case we are looking for "said" as the past tense of the verb "say", and we arrive (in Merriam-Webster) at http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/say and select option 3 - say(verb) where there are 24 synonyms (see note 1 below) and 112 related words (see note 2 below) listed.

I trust that makes the use of a thesaurus clear, even to one who thinks that the word is synonymous with "dictionary" and that its contents are listed by use (e.g. "dialogue tag"), and I further trust that there are enough listed to justify the use of the adjective "comprehensive". I am sure Merriam-Webster would be happy to add any more you can suggest.

Note 1 articulate, bring out, clothe, couch, enunciate, express, formulate, hypothecate, hypothesize, pass, postulate, premise, presume, presuppose, put, recite, reel off, speak, state, suppose, tell, utter, verbalize, vocalize

Note 2 accept, advertise, affirm, air, allege, announce, assert, aver, avouch, avow, believe, blabber, blaze, blurt, bolt, breathe, broadcast, chirp, claim, clothe, comment, communicate, con, conceive, conclude, conjecture, contend, couch, craft, credit, declaim, declare, deduce, describe, discuss, drawl, dream, fancy, figure, formulate, formulize, frame, gasp, gather, get off, give, guess, hint, imagine, imply, infer, insinuate, insist, intimate, judge, learn, lip, look, maintain, memorize, mouth, murmur, orate, paraphrase, perceive, phrase, pipe up (with), post, preconceive, proclaim, profess, promulgate, publicize, publish, purr, put, reckon [chiefly dialect], remark, render, rephrase, restate, reword, share, shoot, shout, snarl, sound, speak, speculate, splutter, spout, study, suggest, summarize, surmise, suspect, swallow, take, talk, tell, theorize, think, translate, utter, vent, ventilate, verbalize, vocalize, voice, whisper, word, write up

 

[cocput]

To use a thesaurus to find "dialogue tags" ... we arrive (in Merriam-Webster) at http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/say and select option 3 - say(verb) where there are 24 synonyms (see note 1 below) and 112 related words (see note 2 below) listed.

The link could be further refined as: http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/say[verb]

This list solves my primary problem.

Thank you. You are a gem.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Thinking about it, Melville's "was the answer" is perfectly acceptable in terms of English grammar, and his usage results in clear prose. I don't see why it is an unacceptable tag excepting the argument that it isn't a trendy way to write at this time and may distract the reader as a result.

 

[cocput]

Can I write:

I have a small part where I was thinking of using:

She thought, I should stop him. But, what can I do? Yell, "What are you doing, Ron?" or plead, "Ron, stop playing with my breasts."? What if he was just sleeping?



Would the underlined part be ok? I'd put in the whole thought so that the context s clearer.

 

[lance gt]

Can I write:

I have a small part where I was thinking of using:

She thought, I should stop him. But, what can I do? Yell, "What are you doing, Ron?" or plead, "Ron, stop playing with my breasts."? What if he was just sleeping?



Would the underlined part be ok? I'd put in the whole thought so that the context s clearer.

She wondered if she should stop him, but wasn't sure what to do. She thought of yelling, 'Ron, what are you doing?' or, ' Don't touch my breasts, Ron.' but would he hear her if he was sleeping?

Quotations are for dialogue and apostrophes are used for thought, distinguishing them apart. It just gets to be a bitch doing punctuation, lol

 

[cocput]

Sorry, I made a humongous mistake. I was anyway using third person limited perspective. Stupidity is incurable

Thank you lance for clarifying the usage. I think I will use the second sentence as is.