: Re: Does misspelling words for the sake of bad English improve the immersion or distract the reader? I am trying to write a character that speaks English poorly. I do not want to grossly misspell

@Ann1701686

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It will probably distract quite a few people
I would certainly be distracted by this and search for the words the author really meant, probably without even realizing that this is intentional.
Most authors will use the grossly misspelled words and similar techniques to show the reader that it's intentional. This also emphasizes the problems with the language.
Many people will not even catch every single mini-mistake you place in your text and they might even only realize it after being through half the book. Humans normally don't read every single letter of every single word. We are used to reading fluently and our brain will often just correct minor mistakes if we are not specifically searching for them. Espeially when doing some light reading your readers will probably not dedicate so much attention to everything and will skip over quite a few small typos.
But those that realize will be distracted by it. They will search for the right word because they think that the author just had a typo or that they are misinterpreting the meaning of the used word. And then they find the next typo and they have to re-read the sentence with the correct word in mind.
You might want to mix the two versions if you are bent on using this - you could for example start with obvious mistakes and let your characters point them out, but then switch to another character and let someone point out to the reader that this person "is quite good and only makes minor mistakes". This way everyone will get it and people won't be so distracted, because someone told them "he typically confuses he and she" or whatever you want to use in your text.

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