FYI: early rate change.

Normally I wait until September to post a rate change.  Not for 2015.

(If you're curious as to why, read my About me/rates page.)

This year I'll begin my eighth year as a freelance editor.  Thus I'm announcing a rate change for new clients, starting as of 27-July-2015.  Any current negotiations are not affected.

Action, punctuation, dialog!

Punctuating action beats inside dialog.  It's a little tricky if you haven't done it before.

Howe'er, after much hunting, I found the answers in the 2012 Grammar Tip Tuesday: Punctuating Interrupted and Continued Speech.  Which came from PMS's Em dash page.

Common sense...

"Perhaps the old saying is true and it is not possible to love and be wise. When you are as devoted to anyone... I expect you cease to be sane about the matter."

"Sane," said Searle sharply.  

"Yes; things lose their proper proportions.  Which, I take it, is a loss of sanity."

Speech tags: volume 2

So why don't action tags replace speech tags?

Because what you do isn't what you say.  Plus, action can happen at the same time as dialog, and frequently does.  Just to make things more exciting.  :)

When I'm working, or even talking about them, I tend to divide books into two categories of What Characters Do.  This might be a holdover from reading lots of dramas, possibly -- but if you think about it, that's how plays are.  Action or dialog.  Doing or speaking.

There's actually more categories, but as I haven't got OSC's writing book handy, you're stuck with my categories today.

Speech tags: volume 1

I'll be typing up a short series of posts about speech tags. I want to lay down what speech tags are -- and why action tags don't replace speech tags -- and where you really deeply need to use them. What the point of having speech tags is. All that good stuff.

I'm going to pretend for this that exceptions don't exist until I'm done with these posts.


Let's start with my best worst example, Ellery Queen.

"That's it!" cried Ellery.

"Well, if that's what you think," laughed Ellery.

"Not again," Ellery muttered to himself.


Only one of these is a speech tag. One is almost a speech tag.

The first two are action tags. If Ellery 'cried out' then it would be a real speech tag. Crying is an action; laughing is an action.

A speech tag is what you use with dialog -- he said/she said, or asked, or any of a number of words that mean you spoke. Exclaimed is a speech tag. Whimpered, giggled, gasped, smiled, frowned, sighed... are all action tags. They're actions. Hissed is an action, even though it's often used [without sibilants!] as a speech tag.


Speech tags are important. Readers need them. I'll be saying that frequently, or variants on that theme. I'm not there, I can't see your characters; I'm not on the phone, I can't hear them. Make them clear to me when they speak!