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Which form you use is entirely writer preference. Neither 'said James' nor 'James said' is wrong. They are both grammatically correct, along with various other similar dialogue tags. Which one yo...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T17:48:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/19316 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T04:41:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/19316 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Which form you use is entirely **writer preference**. Neither 'said James' nor 'James said' is wrong. They are both grammatically correct, along with various other similar _dialogue tags_. Which one you use is determined by how you write, and especially what sounds better in the context of what you are writing. For example, you may determine that 'James said' sounds more natural at one point, while 'said James' sounds better at another point. It is very common to use both these, and other, forms in the same piece of writing. Another note: some writers will deliberately change tags during conversations, going back and forth between them simply to avoid repetition. If James is speaking with one person, you wouldn't want 'said James' repetitively after every other line.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2015-10-12T22:44:07Z (about 9 years ago)
Original score: 4