Question: What I really want to know is what is the general consensus of dialogue tags? Is the old he said/she said still the preferred tag? Submitted by Margay Leah Justice, author of Nora's Soul . http://margayleahjustice.com/ Answer: Different editors have different preferences of nuance on this subject, but one underlying principle is consistently agreed upon. Dialog tags are a necessity for identifying who said what. Beyond that they have very little use. I’ll explain by example and analysis. *** “Why did you do that?” John asked inquisitively. His sister was on the floor, nearly passed out, with an empty bottle of pain killers next to her. Mary replied meekly, “Because I was just feeling so terrible. My head hurts so bad.” John asked angrily, “So you took a couple dozen pain killers? Mary, that’s suicidal!” “I’m so sorry, John. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Mary responded. John added hastily, “Well, we had better get you down to emergency in a hurry.” Mary agreed, “Yes...