Use Only "Said" or "Asked" as a Dialogue Tag

Why make this change?

I’m fully prepared for many of you to take exception to this one. I’ve violated it myself. But I wish I hadn’t.

The main purpose of a dialogue tag is for the reader to keep track of who’s speaking. You don’t need one after every quote, unless there are more than two people in the conversation, and it’s not clear from the context who said it.

Let’s take a few examples.

“Get out of here,” he ordered.

The sentence, “Get out of here,” is an imperative sentence. That is, it gi...