Editing Eye dialect (section)

==Use==
Most authors are likely to use eye dialect with restraint, sprinkling nonstandard misspelling here and there to serve as a cue to the reader about all of a character's speech, rather than as an accurate phonetic representation.

While mostly used in dialogue, eye dialect may appear in the narrative depiction of altered spelling made ''by'' a character (such as in a letter or diary entry), generally used to more overtly depict characters who are poorly educated or semi-literate.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Nuessel|1982|p=349}}</ref>

The term ''eye dialect'' was first used by [[George Philip Krapp]] in 1925. "The convention violated", he wrote, "is one of the eyes, not of the ear."<ref name="Krapp 1925"/> According to Krapp, it was not used to indicate a real difference in pronunciation but {{Quote |text=the spelling is merely a friendly nudge to the reader, a knowing look which establishes a sympathetic sense of superiority between the author and reader as contrasted with the humble speaker of dialect.|author= George P. Krapp |source='' The English language in America'' (1925)<ref name= "Krapp 1925">{{Cite book |title= The English language in America |last= Krapp |first=G.P. |date= 1925 |publisher= The Century Co., for the Modern Language Association of America}} quoted in {{Cite encyclopedia| title =Eye dialect |encyclopedia= The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language |last= Mcarthur |first=Tom |date= 1998 |publisher= Oxford University Press }}</ref>}}

The term is less commonly used to refer to [[pronunciation spelling]]s, that is, spellings of words that indicate that they are pronounced in a nonstandard way.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Wilson|1993|p=186}}</ref>  For example, an author might write ''dat'' as an attempt at accurate transcription of a nonstandard pronunciation of ''that''.

In an article on written representations of speech in a non-literary context, such as transcription by sociolinguists, Denis R. Preston argued that such spellings serve mainly to "denigrate the speaker so represented by making him or her appear boorish, uneducated, rustic, gangsterish, and so on".<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Denis R. |last=Preston |date=1985 |title=The Li'l Abner Syndrome: Written Representations of Speech |journal=American Speech |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=328–336 |doi=10.2307/454910|jstor=454910 }}</ref>

[[Jane Raymond Walpole]] points out that there are other ways to indicate speech variation such as altered syntax, punctuation, and colloquial or regional word choices. She observes that a reader must be prompted to access their memory of a given speech pattern and that non-orthographic signals that accomplish this may be more effective than eye dialect.<ref name="walpole195">{{Harvcoltxt|Walpole|1974|p=195}}</ref> [[Frank Nuessel]] points out that use of eye dialect closely interacts with stereotypes about various groups, both relying on and reinforcing them in an attempt to efficiently characterize speech.

In ''The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction'', [[John Dufresne]] cites ''The Columbia Guide to Standard American English'' in suggesting that writers avoid eye dialect; he argues that it is frequently pejorative, making a character seem stupid rather than regional, and is more distracting than helpful. Like Walpole, Dufresne suggests that dialect should be rendered by "rhythm of the prose, by the syntax, the diction, idioms and figures of speech, by the vocabulary indigenous to the locale".<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Dufresne|2003|p=200}}</ref> Other writers have noted that eye dialect has sometimes been used in derisive fashion toward ethnic or regional pronunciation, in particular by contrasting standard spelling with non-standard spelling to emphasize differences.<ref>{{Cite book| last= Hornback| first= Robert |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=dMRlDwAAQBAJ&q=%22eye+dialect%22+racism+OR+racist&pg=PA239|title=Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions: From the Old World to the New|date=2018-07-19|publisher= Springer|isbn=978-3-319-78048-1|pages=239|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last1=Feagin|first1=Joe R.| url= https://books.google.com/books?id=rh_vCgAAQBAJ&q=%22eye+dialect%22+racism+OR+racist&pg=PA58|title=Latinos Facing Racism: Discrimination, Resistance, and Endurance|last2=Cobas|first2=José A.|date=2015|publisher= Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-25695-3|pages=58|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Rush|first=Sharon|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oP8WBlIrlUIC&q=%22eye+dialect%22+racist&pg=PR13|title=Huck Finn's "hidden" Lessons: Teaching and Learning Across the Color Line|date=2006|publisher= Rowman & Littlefield|isbn=978-0-7425-4520-5|page= xiii|language= en}}</ref>

Eye dialect, when consistently applied, may render a character's speech indecipherable.<ref>{{Harvcoltxt|Walpole|1974|p=194}}</ref>  An attempt to accurately render nonstandard speech may also prove difficult to readers unfamiliar with a particular accent.<ref name= "nuessel">{{Harvcoltxt|Nuessel|1982|p=346}}</ref>