He Said, She Says, Says He, Said She

Here’s something that drives me nuts (even though I can't really defend my position):

 “Spring is a wonderful time to visit,” says tourism board representative Jane Doe.

“The potholes will be fixed by summer,” said the mayor.

“The new Jetta has also been redesigned,” spokesman Joe Dane says.

 

The reason these drive me nuts? I have to change them to

tourism board representative Jane Doe SAID

the mayor SAID

spokesman Joe Dane SAID

 

Why do I have to change every “says” to “said” and put every one of them after the name instead of before? Because that’s how I first learned to do it, darn it.

In my first couple editing jobs, I was exposed a lot to the idea that news and feature articles should 1. use everyday, conversational language and 2. make sense.

The word “says” in “Joe Dane says” suggests he does so regularly. That’s different from “said,” which suggests he said so in an interview with a reporter. A reporter can know whether Dane said something in an interview, but he probably doesn't know whether Dane runs around saying it all the time. What’s more, it wouldn’t matter that much if he did. We’re not reporting on the man’s habits. We’re reporting on the car, and Dane’s telling us once that it’s redesigned is all that’s probably relevant to the story.

As for the part about using everyday language: In conversation, you don’t say, “Said Betty, lunch will be served in the conference room.” You say, “Betty said lunch will be served in the conference room.” Putting “said” or “says” before the name is contrary to normal conversational language and often Yoda-like (Rants on, she does).

So I like my quotation attributions in the past tense and in most cases I like the “said” to come after the name. The obvious exception, of course, is when something else must immediately follow the name. Like, “The Jetta has been totally redesigned,” said Joe Dane, president of North American sales.

But here’s why I can’t defend my position: These aren’t rules. Not in the larger world, anyway. And though some publications may have a policy of not using present-tense quotation attributions or ones that put the “say” part before the name part, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it that way. It just means that no one who writes for a publication I edit can do it that way.

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