That statistic about dialogue tags stopped me mid-chapter

I was reading an old copy of 'The Elements of Style' I found at a thrift store in Nashville last Tuesday, and it said readers skip over 'said' 90% of the time because it's invisible. That blew my mind because I had been swapping in words like 'exclaimed' and 'murmured' to make my writing fancier. Now I'm going back through my WIP and replacing every elaborate tag with plain 'said' to see if it actually reads smoother. Has anyone else tried cutting back on fancy dialogue tags and noticed a difference in how beta readers respond?

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kelly.keith15d ago

Man, I spent six months writing a novel where nobody said anything they just exclaimed everything.