When reading a book, sometimes the writer will quote the character by saying “The grocery store burned down today” John said. Other times the writer will say the same thing, but will change it to said John. What is the rule as far as which choice to use?
There isn’t really a rule, per se. If ‘said John’ gives the sentence a better flow, use it. You don’t want to get too creative with the saids, though, or you’ll wind up sounding like a Hardy Boys book.
Either one is correct. However, you do need a comma before the closing quotation mark unless the quoted sentence needs some other punctuation.
“The building burned down today,” said John.
“The building burned down today!” John screamed.
“The building burned down today?” asked John.
etc.
“Gah!” sez I, too-slow thwarted editor, meaning to post sme information.
It should be painfully obvious by now why I never took up writing for a living.
There’s not only the idea of sentence flow (as was already posted) but there’s also the idea that if you keep repeating something it gets really annoying for the reader. The last thing someone wants to read is John said John said John said John said John said about forty times down the page. To avoid this, you mix it up a bit, using things like “said John” to make the sentence flow a bit differently and using other synonyms for “said”. When one of my teachers in high school made this point, she also handed out a list of 100 synonyms for the word “said”.
“The building burnt down yesterday” said John, ashen-faced.
“The building burned down yesterday,” said John hotly.
“The building’s on fire,” John cried with alarm.
“The museum of Chinese artifacts burned down yesterday,” said John charmingly.
“Marvel Comics HQ burned down yesterday,” John said despairing Lee.
My favorite way to handle this problem is to just omit the identifying tag “said John/John said” entirely, and make it clear enough from context that the reader can figure out who’s speaking on their own. (Obviously, you need to use it occasionally when the dialogue seems to be coming out of nowhere, but when you have a distinct flow to the action, it usually just makes sense) Gives the reader a little more challenge, and keeps them paying attention.
Uh, no. Just no. Teachers should get their knuckles rapped for doing this.
The vast majority of professional writers, agents, editors and publishers will all tell you that the word ‘said’ is virtually invisible to a reader. Far, far better that every attribution in your book be ‘he said’ or ‘she said’ that anyone start exclaming, responding, commenting, questioning, snortling, exhorting, or any of the other suggestions on the list.
This isn’t to say you have to tag each and every line of dialog. For example, if you have two people talking, you can skip several exchanges and your reader will be perfectly able to keep track of who is saying what.
Another way out of the ‘he said’ trap is to toss in a bit of stage business in the paragraph. Like so:
Sandra pulled the ring off her finger and slapped it down on the table between them. “I’m not going to marry you.”
John blinked at her. "Why not? What's happened?"
"Guess who I met today?" She bared her teeth at him in an angry parody of a smile. "Mrs. Smith. Mrs. John Smith. When were you going to get around to mentioning her?"
BTW, I vastly prefer “John said” to “said John.” Mostly by analogy. Pretty much every agrees that “he said” sounds normal while “said he” sounds like it belongs in a comic poem or song lyrics.
This will depend on what you’re writing.
I always like to put the name of the quoted person first, and had a journalism prof who would insist on it. His rationale: You wouldn’t put a person’s name and any other verb in that order, i.e., “ran John,” “played the piano John,” “stood John.” So why “said John”?
If you are writing fiction, the idea is to use as few of these attributions as possible. If you are writing romance the idea is to never, ever, ever use “said,” and romance workshops hand out lists like the one engineer comp geek mentioned. Romance writers will use them.
Mystery writers, OTOH, will rarely use anything except said.
Aaargh, Starving but Strong beat me to it. What **SbS **said.
/hijack, because i can’t resist.
“I feel A-1 today,” Tom said saucily.
“My feet hurt,” said Tom flatly.
“He could be hiding in the shrubbery,” Tom hedged.
The only time someone used this and I liked it was Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley pieces - but that was over 100 years ago, and in dialect. His alternation of he said, said he built up a rhythm. But usually “said he” sounds slightly old and forced.
And while we’re at not using other words for said, also don’t use adverbs with said. You can usually make the words being said do that work, or show the speaker reacting some way physically to show it.
Unless you’re writing Tom Swifties, of course (which the first few real Tom Swift books don’t have, much to my annoyance!)
“I’m coming,” Tom ejaculated.
I think that that’s taking it a bit far. Of course, if a writer starts to OVERuse synonyms for ‘said’, and use some of the more outrageous ones on the list, sure, it looks very jarring. But I think synonyms can be used well, along with a mix of the other dialog attribution techniques mentioned in this thread. I’m a particular fan of ‘mumbled’, ‘whispered’, ‘replied’, and ‘shouted.’ (Not to excess of course.)