A friend of mine–who is rather a darling–has asked me to write about these things known as speech tags and explain it all in detail. 

Well, I don’t know really what to say about them.  I’m not a world expert.  Though yes, I was a respected book critic for twenty-some years though, so supposedly I do have a clue or three about literary technique and style. 

(But there’s probably lots to be said about them and I’ll probably only be skating over the surface.  Nevermind.) 

(And I’ll be frank–if anyone wildly disagrees with what I say, I don’t care.  And I am so not interested in an argument about this or any thing that if anyone is after that, I suggest they find an angry wasp or something…Life being too short and all that.)

So speech tags.  What are they and what purpose do they serve?

At the basic level they are nothing more…