posted
I don't know why exactly, but -- to me -- I feel a difference. I know from experience that sometimes I do feel one order fits the sentence much better that the other.
Tom said seems to be much the more common. Said Tom, though, gives a finality? a harder punch? to the sentence.
posted
I also feel a difference. "Tom said" would emphasize what Tom did, except we are all too familiar with "said". So, "said" is a simple clarifier and the reader passes over the phrase more quickly. "Said Tom" emphasizes Tom as the person committing the action and, in my mind, is read more slowly.
I skimmed through a few books randomly pulled from my bookshelf (so by no surprise all three are SF)--Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Flux by OCS, and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Simmons seemed to prefer the "said Tom" order, Card used both regularly, and Stephenson almost entirely used the "Tom said" order.
Therefore, I believe the order is a matter of style.
I thought I read somewhere that 'said Tom' was bad, but I can't actually remember where or when I read that. To me it's not bad so maybe IF I actually read that it was just someone's opinion.
Are we in agreement that it can go both ways in a story, especially when the writer wants to emphasis what was said over who said it?
posted
No prescriptive rule of style recommends one over the other. The choice is a matter of writer preference, tradition or convention, level of formality, varying syntax, or perhaps conforming to contemporary expectations of sentence structure.
"said Tom." to my thinking is more formal and more traditional than "Tom said," which I perceive as more conventional and modern.
In the latter predicate/noun syntax, "said Tom," the attribution clause takes the form of an appositive clause, independent from the dialogue clause but providing vital information, who spoke. As such, it's an appropriate structure.
Conversely, it positions the noun as the object of the attribution clause rather than the subject. That's where the grammatical debate focuses. Is the speaker the object or the subject of the speaking action? Is the principal subject of the entire sentence in the dialogue clause or in the attribution clause? Who or what is performing the sentence's action?
posted
I've definitely read that 'said Tom' is bad, though it crops up so often that I'm not sure that's true. It made me think about it though. The whole point of an attribution os to tell the reader who's speaking, or doing whatever. So the important thing is their name; 'said' is almost invisible. So it seems to make sense to put the name first.
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posted
I think I've mentioned it when this comes up before, but...at some point in my life, but I think no more than a year after starting to write seriously, I got to thinking about the "said Tom / Tom said" dilemma. "said Tom" seemed backwards to me, so thereafter and up till the present day, I've written "Tom said," no matter where it happens to be in the sentence.
So much so, that I can't stop.
But I don't know which way to do it is the right way, or for matter if there is one.
(I was reading a recent book, a collaboration between a well-known politician and an SF writer, and found they, too, wrote "Tom said" rather than "said Tom." Somehow I felt validated. I wasn't alone.)
posted
My question is, should a person be consistent? Or would it matter if your book was half "said Tom", and half "Tom said."
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posted
Neither structure is wrong or necessarily bad. In writing, it's whatever the narrator's tenor demands that makes the choice easiest for me. Be it the biblical formality of an educated narrator, sayeth Tom, or the conventionally educated narrator, Tom said, I consider the narrator who's telling the story.
As a critiquer, I generally don't address either syntax unless it's out of character for the narrator. As a copyeditor, I find the order discretionary and only comment if the precedents are in the other syntax and consistency is in question while ever aware that timely variations are desirable in creative writing.
In another analysis through the standard written English conventional syntax of subject / predicate / object, the issue becomes clearer, somewhat. By replacing a dialogue clause with an apparent subject clause and changing the predicate from said to another verb, for me, the choice becomes easier.
"He threw the ball," said Tom.
The ball, threw Tom. Seems as though the ball threw Tom.
The ball, Tom threw. Ball becomes more obviously the object of the action rather than the subject, but out of sequence for standard written English. I've commonly encountered that structure in informal conversation but not the former example.
Which of the two examples is less murky? I'm mirroring one side of the debate and not intent on settling anything. The other side supports the view that attribution is an appositive clause that better shows the speaker as the object of the speaking action of the subject dialogue. After all, who's speaking isn't the subject focus of the sentence, is it?
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited September 02, 2008).]
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