Use"Said" Only if Necessary: Elmore Leonard's Third Rule modified by his Tenth

Elmore Leonard's third rule of writing: " Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue." And the tenth: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip."

Most of the time you don't need "said" or any other word to connect dialogue to the speaker; just use the dialogue and the reader can figure it out. Here's a the beginning of a scene by Walter Mosley in The Long Fall. The private eye gets a return call from a man he just spoke to.

"Hello?"
"Who hired you?"
"It's not polite to hang up on a brother, Roger."
"I'm not your brother."
"You still hung up on me."
"Excuse me," he said, maybe even meant it. "I'm not used to private detectives calling me on the phone."
"You called me," I reminded him.
"You came to my office."

Enough said!