What to Use Instead of “Said” (and Why Usually Nothing)

What is a dialogue tag?

A dialogue tag is the phrase attached to a line of dialogue that tells us who said it. In English its most common forms are speech verbs such as “said,” “asked” and “replied.” A tag sometimes also carries information about how the line was said: “shouted,” “whispered,” “said angrily.”

Punctuation conventions differ between languages. English fiction usually sets dialogue in quotation marks, with the tag attached after a comma: “I'm coming,” she said. Turkish fiction, like several other European traditions, more often starts each line on a new paragraph with a long dash (the dialogue dash) and adds the tag after a comma.

At a glance: types of dialogue tag

Elmore Leonard's two rules

One of the names most often cited in the dialogue-tag debate is the American crime writer Elmore Leonard. His short piece published in The New York Times on 16 July 2001 later became known as his “10 Rules of Writing.” Two of the rules concern dialogue tags directly:

1. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. For Leonard, the dialogue belongs to the character; any other verb pushes the writer into view. “Said” is far less intrusive than verbs like “grumbled” or “lied.”
2. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.” Leonard treats this as a serious error: the adverb exposes the writer and can break the rhythm of the exchange.

Leonard's rules are written in absolute terms, and not every writer applies them with the same strictness. But the idea behind them is clear: well-written dialogue carries how it is said on its own; the tag doesn't need to explain it.

A short history of adverbs: Tom Swift

An amusing proof of how conspicuous emotion adverbs can be has given its name to a kind of wordplay in English. The Tom Swift juvenile adventure series, which began in 1910, often used other verbs or adverbs to avoid the plain verb “said.” Parodies of those adverb-heavy lines came to be called “Tom Swifties”: joke sentences that build a pun between the line's meaning and the adverb. That a writing habit drew enough attention to spawn its own genre of joke shows how easily readers notice these adverbs.

The emotion adverb: the smallest unit of the Emotion Embargo

The Emotion Embargo, one of Objective Projection's two constitutional prohibitions, proposes that emotion not be named in the text but built from observable details such as light, sound, movement and space. Phrases like “she said angrily” or “he whispered sadly” are the smallest units in which this principle is broken: a single adverb hands the reader, as a ready-made label, the emotion the line should carry.

That is why an emotion adverb is often a signal: if the dialogue itself doesn't carry the emotion, the writer may be trying to patch the gap with an adverb. We discussed the relation to the textbook distinction between objective and subjective description in Objective vs. Subjective Description.

One dialogue, three ways

To see the difference, let us write the same short dialogue three ways. The examples below were written for this article. The scene: two siblings discussing the sale of the house their father left them.

With emotion-adverb tags:

“I'm selling the house,” Selin said coldly.
“How can you tell me that?” Can shouted angrily.
“I have no choice,” Selin whispered sadly.

With “said” only:

“I'm selling the house,” Selin said.
“How can you tell me that?” Can said.
“I have no choice.”

With action beats:

Selin put the keys on the table, in front of Can.
“I'm selling the house.”
Can didn't touch the keys. He pushed his chair back; its leg left a mark on the parquet.
“How can you tell me that?”
Selin turned to the window. Outside, the branches of the plum tree their father had planted were brushing against the glass.
“I have no choice.”

In the first version, each line's emotion is stated by an adverb: coldness, anger, sadness. In the second, the tags become invisible and the lines stay bare; the reader infers the emotion from the words alone. In the third there are no tags; instead, around each line there is a physical action: keys set on the table, keys left untouched, a chair leg marking the parquet, plum branches brushing the glass. From these details the reader builds both who is speaking and how.

When can you use “shouted” and “whispered”?

Leonard's rule is strict, but not all speech verbs are alike. This article's proposal is this: if a verb reports not the speaker's emotion but a physical property of the speech, it gives the reader an observation rather than a label. “Whispered” or “shouted” is observable information about how loud the voice is; “angrily” is an interpretation.

This distinction is close to the planning dimension Objective Projection calls Acoustic Impedance: how sound carries, rises or breaks off in a scene. “Whispered” carries information on that dimension; “sadly” does not. Still, even a physical speech verb grows conspicuous when overused; using a different verb on every line, as Leonard warned, pushes the writer forward. We discussed how an emotion is turned into filmable action in Screenplay Action Lines; action lines in a screenplay are close relatives of action beats in a novel.

An exception: when the emotion word is inside the line

The Emotion Embargo concerns the narrator's voice; the characters' own words are another matter. If a character says “I'm afraid,” that is not an emotion label but something they say, and the reader can weigh for themselves whether it is true and why it was said. We discussed Shelley's creature using emotion words to persuade the one in front of him from this angle in the Frankenstein article. What mental model readers build from the physical cues around a line we discussed in Situation Models.

Language models and emotion adverbs

This topic matters for people who write with AI too. According to a hypothesis we have discussed on this site, large language models asked to write emotional scenes may tend to name emotion on the surface instead of encoding it in physical detail. We called this tendency “delivery-mode drift” in Beyond Hallucination. Emotion adverbs in dialogue tags are one of the places where this tendency may become visible. The hypothesis has not yet been tested in a pre-registered experiment.

Four questions for revising dialogue

1. If I delete the tag, is it still clear who is speaking? If so, the tag may be unnecessary.
2. Is there an emotion word or emotion adverb in the tag? If so, could the line itself or an action carry the same emotion?
3. Does the speech verb report an emotion or a physical property? “Whispered” is physical information; “reproached” is an interpretation.
4. Is the action beat connected to the line? A random movement (“she fixed her hair”) placed before every line becomes a tic; the action should be tied to an object or a tension within the scene.

What the doctrine cannot say here

• It cannot say that dialogue without emotion adverbs leaves a stronger impression on readers. That is a hypothesis not tested with readers.
• It cannot decide that emotion adverbs are a bad writing choice in every case. In some genres and styles they can be a deliberate choice; the doctrine does not pass value judgments.
• It cannot say that Leonard's rules hold for everyone. They are one writer's personal preferences and are used in this article as a starting point.
• It cannot present language models' tendency toward emotion adverbs in dialogue as a firm finding. It is an untested hypothesis.

Limitations

This article rests on a few examples selected from writing-craft sources and on common usage; it is not a systematic study of dialogue writing. Dialogue punctuation varies slightly between publishers, writers and languages; the most common form was followed here. Leonard's rules are reported from a secondary source. The example dialogues were written for this article. The doctrine's concepts and sources are listed in Levent Bulut's knowledge graph, and published works on the Levent Bulut corpus page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a dialogue tag?

A dialogue tag is the phrase attached to a line of dialogue that tells us who said it, such as “said,” “asked” or “replied.” A tag sometimes also carries information about how the line was said.

What can I use instead of “said”?

Most of the time, still “said.” A plain “said” doesn't draw the reader's attention and keeps the dialogue itself in front. If no tag is needed, you can leave it out; to identify the speaker, you can also write a short action beat instead of a tag.

How is dialogue punctuated?

English fiction usually sets dialogue in quotation marks, with the tag after a comma: “I'm coming,” she said. Turkish fiction more often starts each line on a new paragraph with a long dialogue dash and adds the tag after a comma.

Why are emotion adverbs like “said angrily” considered a problem?

Because they hand the reader, as a ready-made label, the emotion the line should carry. Elmore Leonard treats this as an error that exposes the writer. From the standpoint of Objective Projection, an emotion adverb is the smallest unit in which emotion is named.

Should I only ever use “said”?

Not necessarily. Verbs like “whispered” or “shouted,” which report a physical property of the voice, give the reader an observation and work when used in the right place. But using a different verb on every line shifts attention from the dialogue to the writer.

References

• Leonard, E. (16 July 2001). [Short piece on writing]. The New York Times. Reported in: The Marginalian (2013). Elmore Leonard's 10 rules of writing. themarginalian.org
• alphaDictionary. Tom Swifty. alphadictionary.com
• Milliyet. Noktalama işaretleri nelerdir? TDK noktalama işaretleri ve kullanıldığı yerler [Turkish punctuation rules]. milliyet.com.tr

Cite this article

@misc{bulut2026dialogueen,
  author       = {Bulut, Levent},
  title        = {Dialogue Tags: What to Use Instead of “Said” (and Why Usually Nothing)},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://leventbulut.com/dialogue-tags-said-alternatives-show-dont-tell/}},
  note         = {leventbulut.com}
}