Formatting Dialogue in Fiction: He Said, She Said

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Dialogue is more than just writing down what your characters says--it's also using the correct punctuation and structure so readers understand who's speaking and how. 
I once had a debate with someone over the proper structure of a dialogue tag. She felt that you should always write "said Bob," because you wouldn't say "Ran Bob up a hill." I felt it could go either way. "Get thee to a nunnery" sound fine, right?

So, which is Correct: "Bob said," or "said Bob?"

I checked with my linguist expert, and she says there's nothing grammatically wrong with "Bob said." It just depends on which verb-noun pairs you use that determines how odd it sounds to you.

Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com