: Re: Why is there such strong objection to the use of said-bookisms? I am surprised by the vehemence of many writers' objection to said-bookisms -- the practice of using a verb other than "said"

It's more or less an idiosyncracy of language, I believe. I am a translator from English to Czech and one of the things I have to deal with -- constantly -- is INSERTING said bookisms to replace the plain English language. It's funny that the arguments I see on this page are more or less the reverse of what holds in my native language. In Czech, there is a huge number of dialogue tags that can be used, and frequent re-use is frowned upon.

And so, "said" is like a spice here, used sparsely. Characters can proclaim, mention, offer, hesitate. If a character blinks while speaking, you are allowed to use the BLINK as your dialogue tag.

"What did you say?" blinked Bob.

Sounds terrible in English, but it's perfectly acceptable in Czech.

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: Re: Why is there such strong objection to the use of said-bookisms? I am surprised by the vehemence of many writers' objection to said-bookisms -- the practice of using a verb other than "said"

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