To Apostrophise Or Not To Apostrophise
Should writers use apostrophes and non-variant spellings to depict non-standard dialects?
My quick answer is no, unless you yourself are a speaker of that non-standard dialect, you’re writing your novel in that dialect, and you feel that standard English spelling is inadequate to represent that dialect. If that’s you, absolutely, fill your boots. Go for it.
But say it’s not you. Perhaps you’re a Yorkshire author whose novel features a Cockney character, whose dialect you were thinking of representing with spellings such as “goin’” for “going” and “bot’le” for “bottle”. Or perhaps you’re a Londoner whose novel features a Yorkshire character, whose dialect you were thinking of representing with spellings such as “t’” for “the”.
I think this is a bad idea, not least because every misspelling is a headwind for readers trying to immerse themselves in your text. But more than that, I think it’s offensive and insulting to speakers of those dialects. English famously doesn’t match its spellings. We say “We’n’sday” instead of “Wednesday”, and those of us in the south say “barth” instead of “bath”. (And posh southerners will say “thenk you” instead of “thank you”).
But if we had a well-spoken character in our historical novel say, “Thank you, but I had a bath last Wednesday” we wouldn’t dream of depicting this as, “Thenk you, but I had a barth last We’n’sday”.
Essentially, it comes down to this. If a person who speaks what is perceived as higher-class, “standard” English pronounces a word in way that differs from its spelling, we assume that they know what the word is, but that’s just the way they say it. However, if a person who speaks what is perceived as a lower-class dialect pronounces a word in a way that differs from its spelling, we treat that as ignorance, as though they were too stupid to know the correct way to pronounce it. And if you use variant spellings and apostrophes in your novel, you’re agreeing with that.
Cockneys know that “going” has two Gs; they simply choose to not pronounce the second G. Just as everyone knows that Wednesday is spelt with two Ds; we simply choose to not pronounce the first D.
But avoiding insulting your characters doesn’t mean that you can’t represent their dialects in their dialogue. Because dialect isn’t just about how you pronounce words; it’s about which words you choose to use. Sometimes the words chosen aren’t the grammatically correct one, and that’s fine. My rule is this: correctly spell and punctuate the words your characters say, but spell and punctuate the words they actually said, not the words the rules of standard English says they should have said.
A group of Londoners might say: “We was well confused.”
A West Country man might say: “I were right confused.”
A Valley girl might say: “I was, like, confused?”
A European might say: “For sure, I was confused.”
A Hugh Grant character might say: “I confess I was somewhat confused.”
All accents and dialects are valid, and English spelling frankly does a piss-poor job of accommodating all of them (it doesn’t help that we were early adopters of printing just as the great vowel shift was happening). But that’s my philosophy. Respect your characters. Respect their accents. Listen to their voice. And write that voice down.
Correctly spelled.
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