Originally Posted by Pulpmeister
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Needless variations of "said". A very serious offender was the late E Phillips Oppenheim, who had to have a dialogue tag on virtually every bit of speech, whether it needed it or not, and with almost monomaniacal determination, avoided the word "said", replacing it with things like "begged" when no one was begging, "confided" when nothing was being confided, etc. I made a list once from just 10 pages of one of his novels, and got these:
declared, assured, acknowledged, begged, insisted, exclaimed, pointed out, observed, pleaded, remarked, admitted, reflected, whispered, directed, scoffed, murmured, inquired, muttered, enjoined, complained,; laughed, cried, offered and sighed.
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