Dialogue tags are used to indicate who spoke some dialogue. In the following sentence said is the dialogue tag.

“We will leave at dawn!” said the leader.

Fiction Liner marks any dialogue tags that it detects with a dotted green underline.

said and asked are considered default dialogue tags. They are bland words but that is the point - they don’t get in the way of your writing. It is normal to also use more descriptive dialogue tags, such as whispered or groaned but most editors are expecting upwards of 80% of dialogue tags to be plain old said and asked.

The use of dialogue tags is not without a little disagreement within the writing community. If your preference is for more descriptive dialogue tags, you will not be alone.