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Q&A
Does misspelling words for the sake of bad English improve the immersion or distract the reader?
A point that has not been touched on in any of the other answers: for some of your readers, English is not their first language. Such readers, if they don't know English very well, would wonder if ...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:19Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43326 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T07:14:22Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43326 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
A point that has not been touched on in any of the other answers: for some of your readers, English is not their first language. Such readers, if they don't know English very well, would wonder if that word you're using is an English word they don't know, or something you've made up. They would try to look it up in the dictionary, come up with nothing, and remain confused about what you wanted to say. Phonetic accent is also much harder to read when English is only your second language: it is considerably harder to parse it into the original word. I remember having particular trouble reading Walter Scott's _Waverley_. It is heavy with a mix of Scottish dialect words, phonetic accent, and words that are no longer in use. At times I found myself struggling to understand what was being said, and no dictionary could help me. Don't do that to your readers.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-03-11T15:49:38Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 1