My advice: Try not to use them. Instead, try a more creative solution first.

Maybe something like this:

Paul shambled into the kitchen at around noon on Sunday. The coffee
was, thankfully, still warm. "Apartment Fire Kills Seven in Columbus"
said the paper that his wife read as she took heavy drags on the first of many
afternoon cigarettes.

"That asshole boss of yours making you stay late again, Paul?"
questioned Mary as she flicked ashes into her empty cup. Paul grunted
affirmatively as he sipped his coffee, black.

Compare that to:

"That asshole boss of yours making you stay late again, Paul?"
questioned Mary as she flicked ashes into her empty cup. "Mmm-hmm,"
said Paul as he sipped his coffee, black.

I think the first sample is more easily read. In the second one, the onomatopoeia of the "Mmm-hmm" gets in the way when reading. Granted, it's not a huge difference; it's just that the first one is a much smoother read.

But sometimes you will really want to or need to use a transcribed grunt. If you want to use them effectively, then there should probably be some ground rules on how to write them in a proper way.

Fortunately there's this article from Nigel Ward at the University of Tokyo entitled "Issues in the Transcription of English Conversational Grunts". (Yes. Really.)

Among many other helpful suggestions and observations it provides the following "Phonetically Accurate Schemes":

Hesitation Sounds: Use "uh" or "ah" for hesitations consisting of a
vowel sound, and "um" or "hm" for hesitations with a nasal sound,
depending upon which transcription the actual sound is closest to. Use
"huh" for aspirated version of the hesitation as in "huh? [other
speaker responds] um ok, I see your point."

. . .

Yes/no sounds: Use "uh-huh" or "um-hum" (yes) and "huh-uh" or
"hum-um" (no) for anything remotely resembling these sounds of assent or denial"

. . .

Another scheme (Lander, 1996) lists several "miscellaneous words",
including: "nuh uh" (no), "mm hmm" (yes), "hmm mmm" (no), "mm
mm" (no), "uh huh" (yes), "huh uh" (no), "uh uh" (no)

While this does codify the matter, I think that it minimizes but does not eliminate the possible ambiguity from using "conversational grunts" in writing. I believe that the best thing to do is to creatively avoid using words like uh-huh and huh-uh as much as possible, using them sparingly and only as a last resort. Mmm-kay?

---

(0)

Login to post a comment!