dialogue tag

dialogue tag (plural dialogue tags)

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dialogue,‎ tag.
2. (narratology, authorship) A sentence part that attributes a piece of written dialogue to its speaker. (e.g. In "Get out of here," he said, "he said" is a dialogue tag.)

   Not every paragraph of dialogue needs to have a dialogue tag attached to it.

   • 2000, Tom Romano, Blending Genre, Altering Style: Writing Multigenre Papers, →ISBN, page 63:

     Sometimes inexperienced writers will discover the useful tool of tacking on detail to a dialog tag with a present participal or adverbial phrase: "It's too late," she said, closing the door.

   • 2004, Leslie Wainger, Writing a Romance Novel For Dummies‎, John Wiley & Sons:

     A dialogue tag has to indicate sound

   • 2011, Deborah Halverson, Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies‎, John Wiley & Sons:

     An alternative style forsakes italics altogether and assigns a dialogue tag: This is going nowhere, he thought.

   • 2015, Kris James; Laura E. Koons, Stefanie Spangler Buswell, Beyond the Style Manual: Bundle #1‎, Red Adept Publishing:

     A line of dialogue followed by a dialogue tag looks like this: “Nothing suits me better than a fried egg on toast early in the morning,” Billy said.

• speech tag, attribution, annunciatory clause, quotative, quotation marker
• tag
• tag line

• said-bookism
• Tom Swifty

• Direct speech on Wikipedia.Wikipedia