"So-and-so said, exclaimed, etc."

Hopefully, but I didn't want to use my good stuff.

 

I agree with IJAG et. al. but I'll throw another possibility out there ... asked.

I feel funny writing, "What am I going to do now that my house burned down?" Harry Potter said.

I've done it both ways but I'll be honest I'm partial to "asked" when there's a question, even though the punctuation clearly indicates a question.

If I'm covering a meeting I will more likely than not put "asked" in this situation, "What the hell are you guys doing about pig farms in my neighborhood?" Hermione Granger asked the council.

I don't remember asked ever getting changed in any of my stories.

Is that a pet peeve for anyone here?

 

Nope. That's fine.

But not "questioned" or "queried" or "wondered" or any of those.

I'm fine with "said" and "asked."

 

Well, if the other team didn't score, either, then the team wasn't overmatched (although its offense may have been).

Also, they could have had a gaggle of silly turnovers, which could mean carelessness and/or incompetence but may not have meant they were overmatched.

But if the score was something like 38-3, then, yeah, it was already apparent they were overmatched.

I'm going to have to disagree on this one.

I don't think he is really ASKING "What am I going to do now that my house burned down?"

It's not like he's expecting anyone to give him an answer.

I think "wondering" is exactly what he's doing in this case.

 

Point taken, but I'd rather use said than wondered.

 

Dammit, no spoilers!

I am leery of asked.

I think the question mark conveys it. But if it's a special case -- you are quoting him talking to family or firefighter or somesuch -- you need to say that he asked his mother/the firemen/etc.

 

"That's just Manny being Manny," grunted Manny while squeezing out a deuce. "So there you go."

 

It's got to be part writer's idea and part paper's style to some degree. I remember covering a high school football game last season and I stayed over at a friend's house that Friday night. On Saturday, I looked at my paper's Web site to check out my story, which included "said" all the way through, and I grabbed the hometown newspaper off the coffee table; its story on the same game did not repeat one attribution -- ranging from said to exclaimed, to lamented ..."

I stopped reading anything but the quotes half-way through.

 

I was taught that it's kosher to do that. Seems like more of an observation than an opinion. But I'm also basing this on the fact that I've never had an editor kill it.

 

[blue] I wish journalism would borrow from Sir Arther Conan Doyle and drop the word said. In his Sherlock Holmes books, Doyle would write, "Dr. Watson ejaculated." [/blue]

 

I'm sure it was out of medical necessity, though.