Writing Accents: Yea or Nay?

Just your opinions on the matter. If a character has an accent, do you prefer to simply write their dialogue as normal (mentioning at some point their specific accent), or write it the way it's being said (kinda like Hagrid; chock full o' apostrophes and alternate spellings)?

Personally, I tend to go for the first option; just occasionally, I might intentionally misspell something the way it sounds (so to speak), so the reader will have an idea of how they sound.

I like accents. Try to keep the sentences clear though— "Top o' 'he 'orning 'o ya," gets hard to read at times.

It's a balancing act. You don't want to make the accent too unreadable or too "normal" at the same time. If a reader has to stop at every sentence and reread it to understand, you're doing it wrong.

I only applied an accent once to an ice dragon who slurred his sharp sounds. Next time I do something like that, I'll have to tone it down.

A similar mechanic applies to text-speak, where it is usually heavier than it should be. For example, most people I seen only use the basics (like "u" and "lol") and not complete shorthand. Punctuation and capitalization are usually missing, due to the limitations of a keypad. One book I read recently set off some red lights when I had to re-read a few sentences because real teens don't text like that.

Yeah, accents are fine; just don't go overboard with it. I have several NY friends if I ever want to hear the accent; I don't want to have to read giant amounts of it on paper.

Brooklyn Rage! BROOKLYN RAGE!!

edited 19th Jul '11 8:26:06 AM by KingZeal

Only if I'm making the accent intentionally hard to understand. Like one character's thick Cockney accent. Oftentimes, the accent wouldn't even impact a phonetic transcription that much, but for a severe example:

All other times, though, I'll write accents normally with a mention in the narrative. Tell, not show in this case.

Generally, only drop small amounts of accented speech to show it, then write in normal English. That's how I prefer my writing.

I don't write accents because I don't know accents well enough to write competently. Oh, I can imitate them, anyone with a base knowledge of an accent from TV shows and wing it, but I only know from one facet. So I'm not comfortable writing them. I'll state the accent after the dialogue was made:

"Yeah, just take a right on 12th and keep going 'till you see the Wal-Mart," he said in a southern drawl.

If you state the accent, you can leave it to the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps (dropping consonants, slow tone, etc.) Then again, I've always been a fan of minimalism. Oh, and the abbreviation has become a writing tic of mine, regardless of accent or tone.

edited 19th Jul '11 9:42:54 AM by EnglishMajor

If someone drops aitches or gees, it won't make things too incomprehensible to show it. The rest can hopefully be conveyed by syntax; I don't need to emphasize a French accent quite as much as Rowling did, for instance. And we do not speak of Joseph in Wuthering Heights.

TBH I find eye dialect a bit obnoxious, and slightly cringe-worthy in its underlying assumptions, which are almost bigoted, when you think about it.

I don't bother transcribing accents. You can bet, if the characters were writing, they'd still spell the words more or less the same way (barring mistakes, and regional differences like the absence of the letter "u" in "color"); nobody writes with an accent. For that matter, standard English is not pronounced as written in any dialect.

I do say "Mr Smith" when the person in question is British. Should I?

I don't understand the question. If the character's name is Mr Smith, you'd call him that, right?

I think the question herein is of the British 'Mr' and American 'Mr.'

I'd say it's a minute difference, don't worry about it too much.

That's how The Economist does it; they even had a small article about the difference and other American/British distinctions.

edited 19th Jul '11 11:07:22 AM by Morgulion

Oh?

I'm British and I always write it as "Mr." I've almost never seen it written without the dot.

Except in that post above, obviously, but I was quoting.

edited 19th Jul '11 10:39:59 AM by BobbyG

I like writing british accents like so:

"Hey Jasper, what's your favorite color?"

"I don't have a favorite colour."

"Aw, c'mon, really?"

"Are you criticising my lack of a favorite colour?"

"Yes. I am criticizing you."

Holy crap I do the same thing!

The only time I'll ever write out an accent is if I was writing in IPA.

Otherwise, I go for more subtle things like, yes, differences in spelling, and different slang/colloquial terms, and different wording. For example a German person their verb & axillary verb to the end may chuck.

In a Translation Convention work (for example, Borghild Brynwulfing is supposed to be translated from Proto-Germanic) I do either no puns at all, or puns that can be preserved from P.Ger to E, and I write with the unusual vernacular suggestive of a close translation.

edited 19th Jul '11 11:05:47 AM by annebeeche

Also, sometimes I find it mighty easy to convey a sort of southern-like accent if you go on picking your words right.

The last time I wrote a southern person she was a 19th century Virginian slave learning how to read, so naturally her vernacular was conveyed through her writing.

edited 19th Jul '11 11:14:54 AM by annebeeche

I like reading dialect writing (or even reading words that say that a character had a strong accent in the narration) so I do use it at least sometimes in my stories. I probably use it the most in my Harry Potter stories because it's already used that way in the original series and since I write Hagrid's dialogue the way Rowling does, I don't think it's fair (and not as fun for me) to only have him be written in dialect writing. I use it in a few of my Sailor Moon fanfics that involve characters who are speaking English, although in those I tend to show it more in the narration or the characters' use of dialect words/grammar than writing out the accents.

Then again, I'm an accent-lover, so that has a lot to do with it.

edited 19th Jul '11 11:46:29 AM by Rainbow

I write accents for my characters but I try to limit the changes I make so it's still comprehensible. Like the character with a Brooklyn accent replaces the "th" sound with a "d", "er" with an "ah", and than words that end with an "ng" sound usually become "n'".

I also try to limit the number of characters with accents for the sake of the readers. Besides the example I mentioned above the only other character I write with an accent is the French foreign exchange student. Than again most of the characters are native Midwesterners and we apparently don't have an accent and all.

@Mr AHR, if you're writing Jasper with British spelling, you want 'favourite'.

Ah. So I do.

Thanks!

edited 19th Jul '11 12:40:21 PM by MrAHR

*has an quiet, irrational hatred of American spelling*

edited 19th Jul '11 12:43:54 PM by cityofmist

D: