She said, "Whattttt?!"

She said, "Dialog Tags."

Okay, so it was really me who said it—er, typed it—but that's besides the point.

DIALOG TAGS

Right. Okay. Dialog tags—what are they?

Dialog tags are basically [pro]noun+verb.

The big three are: said, asked, and replied.

But there are others—ones that can make your story all the better, and give your characters an appropriate voice for what they're saying. So instead of said, asked, and, replied, try these:

screamed, yelled, whispered, panted, whined, protested, hissed, declared, joked, spewed, whimpered, cooed, shouted, groaned, told, teased, stammered, stuttered, sang, begged, questioned, sputtered, admitted, snickered, spat, pleaded, chortled, pronounced, trumpeted, jeered, muttered, retorted

(Bolded are my personal favorites.) The list goes on. You can get creative with them—but you also need to make sense. You wouldn't ask how the weather was and use a dialog tag like interrogated. 

Right: "How was your day?" he asked.

Wrong: "How was your day?" he interrogated.

Do you see the difference? The first example portrays a normal conversation—awesome. The second example makes me think that "he" is some intense wrestler with a mohawk, growling the question—WTF?

Now there are rules too. 

A line of dialog and it's tag are one sentence. Got that? One sentence . . . together . . . as ONE sentence.

That being said . . .

If the dialog precedes the tag, then the period inside the quotation marks must be replaced with a comma, like so:

"I love you," she admitted.

If the tag precedes the dialog, then it should be like so:

He said, "That's nice."

Sometimes  you may want to identify the speaker in a different place—somewhere besides before and after the dialog. This is possible. You can identify the speaker in mid sentence, like so:

"That," Maggie began, "is what you call a burn."

Notice the commas (in red), and the lowercase -i (in green) when I returned to dialog. This is because the tag interrupts the dialog, rather than separating it into two sentences.

Don't be afraid to add some modifiers and stage direction in there as well. Modifiers would help to modify or describe their tag. (For example: "Yes," he answered bitterly." Notice the modifier in yellow.) Stage direction tells what the speaker is doing. (For example: "Oh," she replied, shrugging. Notice the stage direction in light blue.)

And before I forget again . . . don't replace question marks and exclamation points with commas. They act as commas. Take a look:

"Can you repeat that?" he asked.

"No!" she replied, and stomped away.

You'll also notice that unless it is a name, "I", or God (He), all pronouns are lowercased. This is because they are still part of the same sentence. Remember? One sentence. Word processors will try to tell you differently at times (like when using a punctuation mark other than a comma), but they are wrong. I repeat, they are wrong.

Now that you know how to use them, don't overdue 'em. Redundancy is annoying and unnecessary. If you have an extended conversation between two speakers, you don't have to have dialog tags every single time. They can be used to express the speakers initially, a change in tone, or to refresh the audience as to whom is speaking. Place them where appropriate, and keep in mind what I've said.

"And with that," she said, saluting, "I'm out until next time."

of vs. have

This [common] mistake has stood out in my mind during the past week. I don't know if it's just me, or if it's the grammatical error of the week... but I feel as if it's a good place to start. (I hope so anyway.)

*clears throat* Right. On to the grammar lesson.

OF vs. HAVE

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone to think must've is actually must of, could've is actually could of, should've is actually should of, etc. However, just because something is common doesn't mean it is correct. I repeat: just because something is common does not mean it is correct. 

Yeah? Okay. Onward... write!

Let's use must've vs. the common mistake of must of as our example. Phonetically speaking, must've does sound like must of; I'll give ya'll that. However... there's that little punctuation mark called the apostrophe thrown in there. (Punctuation has prevailed you once again!) That apostrophe makes the word a contraction, taking out the space and the -ha of have. It doesn't stand for must of, it stands for must have.

What's the big deal you ask? *rubs hands together* Well, well, well... let's take a look at just the definitions. (We won't even go into the logistics of prepositions, verbs, auxiliary verbs, etc.)

(As defined by Webster's New World Dictionary and Thesaurus.)

of (uv) preposition.

1. from;   a) coming from [men of Ohio]   b) resulting from [to die of fever]   c) at a distance from [east of the city]   d) by [the poems of Poe]   e) separated from [robbed of his money]   f) from the whole constituting [one of her hats]   g) made from [a sheet of paper] 
2. belonging to [the pages of a book]
3. a) possessing [a man of wealth]   b) containing [a bag of nuts]
4. specified as [a height of six feet] 
5. characterized by [a man of honor]
6. concerning; about [think of me]
7. during [of recent years]

have (hav; before "to" haf) verb. 

vt. had, having

1. to hold; own; possess [to have money, a week has 7 days]
2. to experience [have a good time]
3. to hold mentally [to have an idea]
4. to state [so rumor has it]
5. to get, take, consume, etc. [have a drink]
6. to bear or beget (offspring)
7. to engage in [to have a fight]
8. to cause or cause to be [have her sing]
9. to permit; tolerate [I won't have this noise!]

... and so on and so forth. Have can also be a noun, meaning a wealthy person or nation... but that's beside the point.

Bring some much hated Geometry logic into this. 

Of = [any one of (Hah!) its definitions]  

Have = [any one of its definitions]

Must of = must from, must of = must belonging to, must of = must possessing/containing, must of = must specified as, ...

Please... my eye... it's twitching. Obviously of does not fit. Let's try out have.

Must have = must hold/own/possess, must have = must experience, must have = must hold mentally, must have = must state, must have = must get/take/consume, ...

*eye stops twitching* Oh, thank God, it fits...