This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Elliotte Rusty Harold. Original Post: Said Terence or Terence Said Feed Title: Mokka mit Schlag Feed URL: http://www.elharo.com/blog/feed/atom/? Feed Description: Ranting and Raving Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Elliotte Rusty Harold Latest Posts From Mokka mit Schlag

I’m having trouble figuring out which form of dialog tag is preferred under which circumstances. In fiction dialog, should I write:

“I’ll call a car to take us to my studio,” said Terence.

or

“I’ll call a car to take us to my studio,” Terence said.

Which flows more naturally under which circumstances? I’ve tried googling it, but if the answer is out there I can’t find the right search terms to describe the question.

There are, of course, many other ways of indicating the speaker. For instance, if there are only two named characters, you can use the name of the other one in the dialog:

“Jenni, I’ll call a car to take us to my studio.”

You can add an action before the dialog:

Terence motioned to the door. “I’ll call a car to take us to my studio.”

And sometimes you can omit the dialog tag completely:

“I’ll call a car to take us to my studio.”

But sometimes you just need a simple “NAME said” tag, and I can’t seem to figure out when I should use “NAME said” and when I should use “said NAME”. I tend toward “NAME said” in most of my fiction to date, but in a recent dialog heavy novel I read I noticed that “said NAME” was used about 5 times as often as “NAME said” and it seemed to work.

OTOH with pronouns, it’s almost always “he said” or “she said”. “said he” and “said she” seem to appear primarily in verse and young children’s literature.

Any thoughts?