Grammar Girl here, today's topic is how to hit the right tone when you give characters

accents and dialects.

Guest writer Charles Carson writes,

To flavor a novel and provide authenticity, authors often use dialect in their written

dialogue.

But the use of dialect in writing is tricky, and if you don't use care and sensitivity

it may backfire.

It may say more about the author and his or her assumptions than about the characters,

or it may distract readers to the point that what is being said is overshadowed by how

it's being said.

First, let's talk about the difference between accent and dialect.

When we talk about a person's accent, we're referring to how they pronounce words.

So when Aliza do little things, just you wait and re-agents, just you wait.

She's using standard English with a Cockney accent.

People are caused by interference from one's native language, as with Arnold Schwarzenegger,

who speaks with an Austrian accent, or by interference from one's native dialect, as with

Holly Hunter, who speaks with a Georgian accent.

Both speak accent-ed standard American English.

When writing for a character with an accent, it's tempting to render the characters' speech

phonetically using non-standard spellings.

However, this practices risky and should be avoided unless you specifically want to emphasize

how a character speaks.

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