Let’s say you’re writing a brilliant piece of
dialogue for your novel: “The zombie was wearing a pink carnation.” Is it said Squiggly? or Squiggly said?
I always have to look that up. It’s a ubiquitous
thing. You probably see dialogue or a quotation in a news story 100 times a
day, but for my brain, it’s background noise. It doesn’t register.
Here's the answer: The name comes first in
dialogue tags.
“The zombie was wearing a pink
carnation,” Squiggly said.
‘He Said’ or ‘Said He’?
It’s the same for pronouns. The pronoun comes
first too.
“The zombie was wearing a pink
carnation,” he said.
From now on, I’ll try to remember that who
said it is the important part, so it comes first, and you can remember
it that way too.