Second; in real life people speak in half sentences, incomplete thoughts, idioms and often respond to questions with a shrug or facial expression. They curse, snort, laugh, say ‘um’, elicit help from the other person to finish a thought. They interrupt each other, change the subject in mid-sentence or say, “ya know what I mean?” They say that because the other person does know.
There are moments of silence—often meaningful. It’s the space between the notes that makes the music. A kid quietly pushing his food around on his plate is telling us something.
Real dialogue, however, is difficult to read (try reading a court transcript) and tedious to write. That said, dialogue should be written as naturally as possible, then cleaned up to make it readable. Writing excellent dialogue is difficult. Work at it. Think about why your characters are having this conversation not about how you can use it as a clever device.

“Keep writing,” he said, as he added his twitter handle (@hefferonjoe) and signed off to read another post by Kristen who, as you know, is a prolific and successful blogger.

Russell – it’s only boring to the writers, not the readers. Plenty of great authors have admonished us to stick with ‘said’, such as Elmore Leonard here https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/elmore-leonard-10-rules-for-good-writing
Readers don’t see or the words, ‘she said’ or ‘Marty said’. They slide over them as invisible but necessary parts of the dialogue. Anything else becomes a distraction.

One side of the family that never seems to stop using names when addressing people (or animals), and another side that NEVER uses them at all (or even knows them). I never fully appreciated what it must have been like for these two worlds to collide, for two people to fall in love and have a relationship with this kind of culture difference. Not that it’s the biggest mountain to overcome, but still, how strange that must have been. As a byproduct of that union, no wonder I’m so freaking weird and unable to fit in. But really, until you pointed it out, I never noticed how many of the characters in my head carry the voices of one side instead of the other. Neither side being actually normal. So much sociology here! I had no idea that I could ever learn THIS MUCH from one small observation. Thank you for being the river that opened to this ocean of knowledge.

(PS– Note that I wrote “Thank you,” instead of “Thank you, Kristen.” Working on undoing how I was raised, now that I know it was weird. You gave me that “glass-shattering moment” like in the show How I Met Your Mother. I just spent the whole weekend realizing how freaking strange my family is! That’s what I get for visiting. LOL.)