He said, she said

A speech tag is the thing that goes with a line of dialog that tells you who said it; it “tags” the line with the name (or occupation, or some other identifiable description) of the person who said it.

“Run!” Jeff cried. (“Jeff cried” is the speech tag.)

Jane said, “I can’t.” (“Jane said” is the speech tag).

“Why not?” he demanded. (“He demanded” is the tag.)

“BECAUSE YOU’RE STANDING ON MY FOOT!” the girl told him. (“The girl told him” is…well, you get the idea.)

The most common verbs used in speech tags are “said” or “asked.” They are the most “invisible” to the general reader. Some writers, in the interest of variation, go out of their way to use alternatives (as in the above examples “Jeff cried” and “he demanded.”) This is not bad, to a point, but one tends to reach that point very quickly. Most of the time, good dialog will not require the use of a tag other than said or asked, except when the whole point is that the person saying the line is not saying it in the way you’d expect from the line itself. (Replace the above tags with “Jeff whispered,” “Jane whispered back,” “he said,” and “she mouthed at him,” and you get a very different idea of what sort of situation the two of them are in.)

Note also the way line two is punctuated. If the speech tag comes before the dialog, you say “he said” (or equivalent) comma quotation mark line of dialog. In a less exciting batch of lines, it would work the other way, as well: “I can’t,” she said. In other words, if the line of dialog ends in a period, you change it to a comma before you close the quotation, and the speech tag that comes afterward is still part of the same sentence. If the dialog ends in an exclamation point or a question mark, you don’t change the mark to a comma, but the speech tag is still part of the sentence and so you still don’t capitalize it: “I am not stupid,” he replied.

It is not always necessary for every line of dialog to always have a speech tag. If only two people are talking, to each other, then you can establish who they are and leave the speech tags off for a line or two without confusing your reader:

“BECAUSE YOU’RE STANDING ON MY FOOT!” Jane told him.

“Ooops,” Jeff said.  “Is that better?”

“Yes.”

“Can we run now, then?”

“No.”

Jeff frowned.  “Why not?”

One has to be careful not to let the tagless lines run on for very long, or the reader may get confused, but two or three in a row are fine. Note that, in the second line above, the speech tag comes in the middle of the line of dialog, rather than at the end; one can also place it at the beginning, as in the second line of the original example. As soon as a third person enters the conversation, it gets much harder to  leave off speech tags (or stage business that identify the speaker) without risking confusing the reader. It is sometimes possible, but you need to think very carefully before you do it, and be sure that nobody is going to think that Jeff said something when it was actually Jane or George.

Also note that “Jeff frowned,” in the last line, is not a speech tag…and is not punctuated as one. (One cannot frown a sentence.) It is actually a bit of stage business (an action that the character is doing, presumably while saying the line or thinking about saying it), which is another way of indicating who’s talking — if Jeff frowns, and this is followed by a line of dialog, we assume that he’s the one who said it. Stage business, like speech tags, can go before a line of dialog, interrupt it in the middle, or come at the end. 

Jeff frowned. “Why not?”

Jane rolled her eyes.”Because if we do, Angela will shoot us.”

“I certainly will.” Angela raised the gun slightly for emphasis.

“You can’t.” Jeff looked at her, suddenly tired of all this foolishness. “That gun isn’t loaded. I stole the bullets while you were sabotaging the computer.”

Lots of writers get mixed up and try to punctuate a short bit of stage business (like “Jeff frowned”) as if it were a speech tag: “Jeff frowned, “Why not?” This is incorrect, and frequently leads to ridicule of the unfortunate author.

Using a mixture of speech tags, stage business, and untagged dialog usually reads the most smoothly.