: Technical term for written dialogue that mimics the speaker's "sound"? I'm wondering if there's a technical writing term for when an author uses purposefully misspelled words to mimic the sound

@Murphy332

Posted in: #Dialogue #Terminology

I'm wondering if there's a technical writing term for when an author uses purposefully misspelled words to mimic the sound of the speaker? This has the effect of "forcing" the reader to hear the dialogue as it may sound to the writer.

An example would be a character who has, say, a cold or sinus infection whose dialogue might be written this way: "By doze has bid ruddeg all day log!" (Translation: "My nose has been running all day long!")

I've seen (generally fiction) writers employ this technique in dialogue. Is there a name for it?

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@Jamie945

@Jamie945

Eye dialect

You might also consider this technique to be a form of eye dialect where the author intentionally misspells words to reveal something about the character.

Some more information about the term eye dialect:


Merriam Webster
Grammarly
Wikipedia
Thought Co.

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@Sue2132873

@Sue2132873

Phonetic spellings.

Or something similar to that. Phonetic rendering. Spelling phonetically. Etc.

A few resources for you:


How to convey accents in fiction writing: Beyond phonetic spelling
Funetik Aksent
Dialogue: Writing Dialects and Accents

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