I’ve had one of these since high school. My English teacher was adamant about never using said unless we had to.
omg…this is so…amazing…
This is so perfect, wow. Filing this away for future use always…
Except, all of these are in my regular writing vocabulary anyway…
Not to mention the stylistic problem of using incidental words the rest of your writing can’t support, or using words for the sake of the WORD and not the sentence they’re in, leading to prose which draws attention to itself and away from the story it’s building
^ agreed with the last comment.
Advanced creative writing classes in college and all of the writing conferences I’ve ever been to have repeatedly beat us over the head with “USE ‘SAID’ BECAUSE IT IS INVISIBLE AND WE DON’T WANT THE READER TO REMEMBER THAT THEY’RE READING A STORY!’
If they saw this list they would be furious. It kind of makes me nervous just looking at it.