A quick guide to dialogue tags.

"It's easy to mess it up," she said. "I hope this helps."

Nov 18, 2024

The most important thing to remember about dialogue tags is that they should support and occasionally enhance your dialogue, not distract from your dialogue. Keep that in mind as we jump into a few rules and suggestions. Let’s start with the basics.

1. Punctuation

Use a comma instead of a period to close dialogue that will be followed with a dialogue tag.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. Correct.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” she said. Incorrect.

That rule only applies to periods. Use exclamation points or question marks normally.

“I didn’t expect to see you here!” she exclaimed. Correct.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Correct.
“You startled me!” She exclaimed. Incorrect.

Dialogue that is not followed by a dialogue tag should end with a period, not a comma.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said. “Long time no see.” Correct.

2. Capitalization

Dialogue tags are not capitalized. In our previous example, “she said” uses a lowercase s for she. You might see a character take action following a line of dialogue. That is not a dialogue tag, and so it would be capitalized. Let’s adjust our example.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” She set her drink down and slowly rose from her chair.

In this case, the line of dialogue ends with a period, not a comma, because the next sentence is not a dialogue tag. “She” is capitalized because it isn’t a tag'; it’s a complete sentence on its own.

Here’s another example.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he pulled out a chair and sat. Incorrect.

This is incorrect because “he pulled out a chair and sat” isn’t a dialogue tag; it’s a complete sentence. We could fix this a few different ways.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Correct.

In this case, the dialogue ends with a comma and “he” is not capitalized because “he said” is a dialogue tag.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time.” He pulled out a chair and sat. Correct.

In this case, the dialogue ends with a period and “he” is capitalized because “He pulled out a chair and sat” is not a dialogue tag.

If you’re not sure whether your dialogue tag is really a dialogue tag, look at the verb. Is it a speaking verb, like said, yelled, asked, whimpered, mumbled? Then this is a dialogue tag. If it’s any other verb, like looked, glanced, walked, or smiled, then it’s not a dialogue tag.

Be careful with verbs that do involve making sounds but are NOT speaking. For example, verbs like laughed, sighed, and gasped are often incorrectly used as dialogue tags. If you find yourself using he laughed, he sighed, or he gasped as tags, try laughing, sighing, or gasping that line of dialogue out loud yourself. It’s probably not the effect you’re going for.

“I don’t think so,” he laughed. Incorrect.
“I don’t think so.” He laughed. Correct. He says the line, then he laughs.
He laughed. “I don’t think so.” Correct. He laughs, then he says the line.

3. Verb choice

There’s conflicting advice out there. One camp says to get creative with your tags, don’t just stick to said. Use hollered, warbled, interjected, declaimed! The other camp says to stick with said most of the time, with a few askeds or yelleds thrown into the mix sparingly.

All you have to remember is what I said at the start of this video: the dialogue is the star of the show, not the tag. When you write a passage of dialogue, do the tags distract? You’re on the wrong track. You want it to be very clear at all times who is talking with the fewest number of tags possible.

If you’re not sure how to do that, I suggest using dialogue tags for every single line of dialogue in a scene, then trimming a few tags out. So you might start with something like this:

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he said. He pulled out a chair and sat.
“I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind,” she said, stirring her drink.
“We need to talk about this. It’s urgent,” he said, crossing his arms.

Here we only have two characters, so it’s pretty easy to keep track of who’s talking without all the distracting tags. There are plenty of ways you might edit this to put the spotlight on the dialogue.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time.” He pulled out a chair and sat.
“I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind,” she said, stirring her drink.
“We need to talk about this. It’s urgent.” He crossed his arms.

This example isn’t wrong. But honestly, I still find the tags a little distracting, and the rhythm of dialogue action dialogue action is too repetitive and kind of dull to me. You might consider when these characters stir their drinks or cross their arms...before, after, or while they’re speaking? Again, there are multiple ways we could edit this to find a nicer rhythm. Here’s one example.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said, stirring her drink.
He pulled out a chair and sat. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind.”
“We need to talk about this.” He crossed his arms. “It’s urgent.”

Okay, let’s walk through these changes. First, I liked the image of this woman stirring her drink, but I wanted her line about being alone to stand on its own without a tag, so I moved it to the first dialogue tag. I moved the man’s action of pulling out the chair and sitting to before his line both for rhythmic effect, but also because I found the image of him sitting down before saying “I hope this isn’t a bad time” emphasizes the fact that he doesn’t particularly care whether its a bad time for her or not. Lastly, I moved the action of him crossing his arms to go in between his final two lines. Again, this is more rhythmically interesting, but it also adds emphasis to that last line: “It’s urgent.”

I encourage you to play around with this scene and or scenes of your own to experiment with different ways you might construct and combine dialogue tags and action with dialogue and see what kind of effect it has.

One more thing before we leave this example. Let’s go back to the original passage with all those saids. Now, what would this look like if we went with the advice to spice it up with more creative tags?

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she complained.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he taunted. He pulled out a chair and sat.
“I’d rather be alone, if you don’t mind,” she beseeched, stirring her drink.
“We need to talk about this. It’s urgent,” he sermonized, crossing his arms.

Well...those are certainly creative. But they’re also hugely distracting. When I look at this passage, my eyes go to words I don’t see too often when I’m reading, like beseeched and sermonized. It’s distracting me from what the characters are saying. It’s breaking that most important rule.

Again, you can and should use more creative tags sparingly—and with a purpose. For example, you might use one when a character changes their tone and you want to emphasize that. But very frequently, I think you’ll find the scene will be stronger overall if you do that through action and description, not dialogue tags. Let’s say the woman in our example scene loses her temper in the next line. Which ending is more effective and helps you visualize the scene?

“I don’t care!” she hollered.
She slammed her glass on the table, gin sloshing over the rim. “I don’t care!”

Nothing wrong with creative dialogue tags, but more often than not, there’s a better option that will make your writing even stronger.

Common dialogue tag mistakes

A lot of these mistakes aren’t technically wrong in the grammatical sense. They’re mistakes in that they break that one rule—they don’t support the dialogue, they distract from it.

1. Using complete sentences as tags. We saw this earlier with “I hope this isn’t a bad time,” he pulled out a chair and sat. Just remember, if the verb isn’t a speaking verb, it’s not a dialogue tag.

2. Tag redundancy. "What?” he questioned. "Sorry," I apologized. These aren’t technically wrong, but “questioned” and “apologized” are unnecessary and distracting tags. What? is already a question. Sorry is an apology. Your reader knows this, no need to hammer the point.

3. Adverbs. I think adverbs get a bad rap. There’s a time and a place for them—namely, when they add something new to the sentence—but usually adverbs are just there because the verb is weak. So for example, he said loudly instead of he yelled. I do have an example of when I would recommend using an adverb, and it goes with the next mistake.

4. Whispered. This one comes from a copyeditor I know and I have to admit, I hadn’t thought about this before she said it. Writers sometimes use “whisper” as a dialogue tag when they just want to emphasize that a character is saying something meaningful. Consider your setting. Would character A reasonably be able to hear character B if they whispered? In our previous example, our two characters seem to be in a bar. Unless one moved to whisper directly in the other’s ear, chances are they wouldn’t be able to hear the line. If you’re trying to emphasize that your character is saying something meaningful, this is when I think it’s okay to use an adverb, such as “she said quietly.” In our example, where the two characters are in a bar, words like whispered or even mumbled or murmured might not work because the other character probably wouldn’t be able to hear whispers or mumbles or murmurs sitting across a table.

When you find yourself using whispered as a tag, actually whisper the line of dialogue to make sure it’s the effect you want. “I didn’t expect to see you here…” sounds fine in soft voice. “I didn’t expect to see you here…” sounds kinda creepy when you actually whisper it.

5. Too many tags. Every line of dialogue doesn’t usually need a tag. But again, especially if you’re just starting out on your writing journey, don’t worry about this too much in your first drafts. Use all the dialogue tags you want and then go back and get a bird’s eye view of your scene—reading it out loud is an especially effective way to identify unnecessary dialogue tags you can cut and to check the rhythm and flow of your dialogue to dialogue tag and action ratio.

One last tip! Next time you read a novel or a short story, pay attention to the dialogue tags and the dialogue in general. How do those authors use tags? The best way to internalize all of these rules is to read analytically.

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Michelle