Not really appropos to the article, but in reading kid's lit to my girls, I note an inverse correlation between the quality of a kid's book and the authors reliance on using the word, "exclaimed," which is a word that seems to only exist in kids' books.

Dr. Seuss can get through great stories without anybody ever exclaiming anything.  So can Sandra Boynton. (They're also writing in verse.)

But those soft-cover books about TV characters on the wire racks in the book store?  Dora's always exlaiming something.  As do, sadly, then Berenstein Bears.  And so on...

Weren't one of the Berenstein Bears just arrested last summer?  Yes, it was, for making lewd exclaims to a teenage girl and for starting a fistfight with someone else who was trying to have a picture taken with them.  You just can't trust your oversized animated characters these days.