According to whom?

While editing stories this past week, I've noticed a new trend.

Some writers have a habit of attributing paraphrases and quotes like this:

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, Chase Cook, managing editor of The Daily, said.

This is not the right way to do this. You don't want to separate the noun from the participle "said."

Instead, make sure you are attributing quotes this way:

blah blah blah blah blah, said Chase Cook, managing editor of The Daily.

This way the appositive portion of the sentence finds a comfortable spot after the noun and the participle "said" and the noun are together.

In other situations, you may be writing about someone that doesn't have a long title. The normal rule is titles of two words or less go in front of the name, like so:

blah blah blah blah blah, managing editor Chase Cook said.


Attributing quotes to people is easy, but because it is so easy the rules can be often forgotten. Make sure you go through your stories and double check that your attribution is following these rules.