: Re: How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue? How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue?

As far as I know, there is no official rules on how to do this. Authors have resorted to various means to convey this, and we actually do it in common texting more than anywhere else. A good example of that is the difference between "Hey" and "Heyyyyy" where the later is generally understood to be held out and almost more cheerful the more it is lengthened.

It is also common to denote the dropping of 'g' in '-ing' with an apostrophe or merging of words to show almost a laziness of speech or at least less precision in annunciation.

Example:

"I am hoping they are going to find her soon." vs "I'm hopin' they're gonna find her soon."

In my personal writing I try imagine how the words might sound in that particular accent and embellish that aspect. Sometimes I will push it to an extreme if a particular character has a strong accent or some hindrance to their speech like drunkenness.

Examples:

"Pardin' my speakin' L'tenant, Sir. I d'n't mean no harm by it." (a low ranked soldier with little education and a strong southern accent)

"N-no, you got it all wrongâ€¦ Those guys think yer s-some s-sort of ic-c-ce queenâ€¦ I jusst came oâ€™er here to p-prove that yer a nic-ce girlâ€¦" (a drunk attempting to hit on a girl who's already turned him down once.)

In the end, it is really up to you on how you feel the writing will best portray what you want them to sound like. My best recommendation is to actually try saying the sentence out loud in your best attempt at the accent and write what you hear. If you want to get really advanced with it, you could start including actual pronunciation notation, but outside of the more common ones like 'Ã¦' or 'Ã§' most people won't recognize what they mean and you may end up taking attention away from the story as people try to decipher the characters speech.

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: Re: How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue? How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue?

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: The combination "?!" has been in common usage enough that the interrobang (â€½) was suggested as a punctuation mark to replace the need to use two symbols. Note that the interrobang (and thus

: In writing terms, scale refers to how big a problem or conflict is, in terms of how much it affects. A conflict can affect a single room, a whole land, or a single person. Those things

: Evernote I personally have 2 (free) accounts on Evernote, that share almost all notes, meaning I can use them on all my devices. There are online and downloaded versions of the notes application

: Verbless, list-like sentence In copywriting, I got to wonder if the combination of a verbless sentence followed by exclamation is anywhere near correct grammatically. Here's how it is at the

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