: 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

@Holmes449

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As a reader of several genres, rather than a writer, I like being able to "hear" a person. It's fine if everyone talks as if they are an English teacher, but that can get boring.

Hif ya wan' yer peeple t' tak ha certin way, ya need t' make 'em do hit.

One of the more interesting characters I've read was from a series called "Star Risk", by Chris Bunch. (Or maybe it was "Sten", by the same author. I don't remember.) The character spoke in a Scottish brogue, which was typed according to how the character would have said it.

You wouldn't want to make a Confederate "southern boy" from the 1800's sound like they went to Harvard, even if they did. It just wouldn't be right. They may sound more refined than the average red neck of the period, but they still wouldn't sound like a Yankee.

In my above example, instead of trying to tell a reader that my character put too much air into the words that start with a vowel, I simply added an "h". Instead of explaining that the character talked in choppy words, I used them, but left in "peeple", since sometimes these same speakers may draw out certain syllables.

And yes, this may annoy some people. I'm one for being very conscious about my spelling, but even I understand that someone who doesn't speak perfect English in a written story needs to be read in how they speak. It needs to be more than a passing remark at the beginning of the book (only for the reader to be surprised when the movie comes out), or to have to be remind the reader of it (annoyingly) every time the character speaks.

As @Mark Baker mentioned, it can be a fine line between getting the point across while having a little fun with your characters, and making it difficult/annoying/unacceptable to read.

I just remembered that in either "Tom Sawyer" or "Huckleberry Finn", Mark Twain wrote in his foreword that he was trying to get across how people actually spoke, rather than trying to fit a specific dialect. He was very unapologetic about it, too. He wrote in broken sentences, misspellings, and mangled English other ways whenever he needed to.

In the end, it really matters what you need vs. what you want to do, as well as how comfortable you feel doing it. Good luck and have fun!

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