Why it isn't written as follows:
He said that "The sky is blue.".
Why we need a comma in the following sentence:
He said, "The sky is blue".
"The sky is blue," said he.
Again, is this sentence grammatical?
***** NOT A TEACHER *****
Hello:
1. First, I commend you on being persistent. You should keep asking questions until you are satisfied. You are a
true scholar.
2. I once found something that helped me to better understand so-called dialogue tags.
3. According to one grammar book, the words "Tom said," or "He said, " or "said Tom," etc. are parenthetical
elements. That is -- as the book says -- they "serve no grammatical function." In other words, they are NOT
part of the sentence. (Although they do have a LOGICAL relation to the sentence.)
4. IF (a big "if"!) I understand that book correctly, there is a BIG difference between:
(a) He said that the sky is blue.
(b) He said, "The sky is blue."
In (a) all the words are parsed. It is a complete sentence. For example, "The children said that they love ice cream."
In (b) the sentence is "The sky is blue." The dialogue tag is NOT part of the sentence. In fact, if you write a novel,
I guess that you do not absolutely need dialogue tags. (Although they do help prevent confusion on the part of the
reader.) In fact, you do not have to use a comma. I have never written a script, but I imagine that you could introduce
the dialogue in many ways:
Tom said
, "I like you."
Tom
: "I like you."
The important point to remember is that "Tom said" is NOT to be parsed as part of the dialogue because it is NOT. It is
just a comment "thrown" into the sentence to make for easier comprehension.
*****
In my first post, two writers opined that a sentence such as
"The sky is blue," said he is considered
"old-fashioned," etc. because "he" is a pronoun. But I think that it is grammatical. According to those writers,
it just sounds kind of "funny" in modern writing.
Here is a sentence from that grammar book:
"You have until six o'clock tonight to make up your mind," he said brusquely. [brusquely = rather rudely]
The dialogue tag is "he said brusquely." It is NOT part of the actual sentence. But did you notice the writer
wanted the reader to know that the sentence was said by "him" in a rude manner? For example (my bad example):
"I don't love you anymore, Tony," she said, turning her ahead from him in anger. I guess a writer can set the scene by
using long dialogue tags, but please remember -- grammatically speaking -- they are NOT part of the dialogue. They are
just tags. When you buy a dress, there is a price tag. But the tag is not part of the dress itself.
James
My source: R.W. Pence and D.W. Emery,
A Grammar of Present-Day English (1963)
, pp. 142 - 143.