"Dialogue doesn't stand alone," observes William G. Tapply in The Writer (October 2008).  "Character's speeches need signposts to tell us who's doing the talking.  The last thing you want is readers counting back through the speeches so they can figure out who's speaking."

"Nothing bounces a reader out of a story faster than a key line of dialogue that might have been uttered by more than one person, with no way to tell which," wrote Nancy Kress in Writer's Digest (November 2005). 

No doubt every reader has experienced this annoying situation, but there is really no excuse for it.  Fiction writers have plenty of tools for identifying the speaker in dialogue:

• Character voice
• Direct Address
• Context
• Action
• Attribution clauses

Each of these tools has its advantages, limitations, and pitfalls, but a thorough understanding of the issues may help improve the effectiveness of their use.

CHARACTER VOICE

A character with a distinctive voice may need no further help in being identified.  Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Getting Your Novel Published, advises writers to "Create distinctive voices for your characters to help the reader keep track of who is speaking."

DIRECT ADDRESS

One technique that has been used over the years is to have characters address each other directly by inserting names into the dialogue.  For example:

"Gabby, I'm heading back to town."

"Okay, Cisco, I'll catch up to you in the morning."

"Be careful, Gabby.  I smell trouble brewing."

More recently, this practice has been discouraged.  Renni Browne and Dave King, in Self-Editing for Fiction Writers advise against using Ping-Pong direct address, noting that it gets old very quickly, and "People just don't talk like that."

Gloria Kempton (Writer's Digest, October 2006) lists direct address as one of the "Seven Common Mistakes in Dialogue," labeling it the "John-Marsha Syndrome." 

David Morrell, in Lessons From a Lifetime of Writing, seems to agree: "I recommend eliminating names from dialogue completely."

Other writing coaches acknowledge situations where names in dialogue are acceptable, even useful.  According to Michael Levin, in Writer's Digest (January 2006), "Only have characters call each other by name when there's a good reason for it.  There are really only three times when we call each other by name in real life.  (1) when we meet each other somewhere, (2) when we're really angry, and (3) in the throes of great passion."

CONTEXT

If it is perfectly clear, from the surrounding context, who is speaking the dialogue, there no need to use another tool to identify the speaker.  To expand on Elmore Leonard's thoughts in Ten Rules of Writing, "The line of dialogue belongs to the character; [anything else] is the writer sticking his nose in."

According to Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, the use of other means of identifying the speaker may be avoided ". . . by placing next to the line of dialogue a sentence whose subject is the speaker."

ACTION

Closely related to context (and possibly a subset of context) is action.  If a character is doing something, and in that same paragraph he speaks, there is no confusion as to who is speaking.  Action, as it relates to dialogue, is sometimes referred to as beats of action, action tags, gestures, mannerisms, body language, or stage business. 

Tom Chiarella, in Writing Dialogue advises writers to "Use actions and reactions to frame a dialogue.  Reactions are good, part of the give-and-take of the whole."

James Scott Bell, in Writer's Digest (June 2003), notes that "Because dialogue is a form of action, we can use the physical to assist the verbal.  This is called the action tag."

"Don't get carried away with this technique," advise Renni Browne and Dave King, in Self Editing for Fiction Writers, "A beat after every line of dialogue is even more distracting than too many speaker attributions."

Evan Marshall, in The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing, seems to agree when he says, "Keep body language with dialogue to a minimum.  Beginners often use gestures, mannerisms and other bits of 'stage business' liberally in their dialogue.  In almost all cases these actions needn't be conveyed to the reader." 

But Marshall notes another potential benefit of mixing action and dialogue when he states that "Sometimes an action within dialogue gives you a nice pause for introducing a new train of thought or adding drama."

ATTRIBUTION CLAUSES

As stated in Writing A to Z, (edited by Kirk Polking) attribution is, "A term that refers to the writer's or reporter's stating the source of a direct quote."  According to Peter Selgin, in By Cunning & Craft, "Attributions are the little tag lines that tell us who has just spoken or is speaking . . . ."

Various terms are used to describe attribution clauses: tag lines, speech tags, dialogue tags, attribution tags, speaker attributes, dialogue attributions. 

In sum, fiction-writers wanting to eliminate or reduce reader confusion as to who is speaking a passage of dialogue have plenty of tools to do so.