The English language is not static. Many writers cling by their tattered fingernails to the past, but if pressed, I daresay, they would not want to revert to the language of Chaucer. On the other hand, there are those who would strain the language past all recognition, turning it into a mish-mash of meaningless drivel that sounds impressive on the surface, but won't stand up to close scrutiny or analysis.

In truth, it is exactly that sort of thing that sociolinguists love to scrutinize and analyze. It is a fascinating field that reveals much about a people and their culture.

As a writer, you can use these concepts to help you craft more effective dialogue. If ever there's a time and a place for breaking the rules of formal, standard English, it's in writing fictional dialogue. Recognize that your character's psychological makeup, family environment, neighborhood and region, ethnic background, socioeconomic standing, education, and other factors influence the way he speaks – that dialogue is more than just a signal that the speaker is rich or poor, northern or southern, well-educated or ignorant. By thinking deeply on all of these influences, you can create richer conversational exchanges that tell the reader a great deal more about your characters.

"Usage Experts Change Their Minds, Too," Anne H. Soukhanov, The Editorial Eye, http://www.eeicommunications.com/eye/usage.html

Reading the article cited above, I have to confess that my first thought was, "Would someone really pay me to debate the usage of a word? Given a particular word, would I represent the prosecution or the defense? It's a wonder they ever manage to publish a new edition of an unabridged dictionary, considering how long a panel of writers could argue over words like 'irregardless' and 'hopefully'…"

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Remember the word "paradigm"? Anyone alive and working in the corporate world in the 1980s probably still cringes at the sound. There's nothing inherently wrong with the word, mind you – it wasn't even misused, so much as it was overused, abused, thrown against the wall until it stuck like soggy pasta. For nearly a decade, we were forced to watch, in horror, its slow, slimy progression down the wall until the wall had to be knocked down in favor of a cube farm. But I digress. Paradigm is a lovely word that has simply been saddled by more corporate buzzword baggage than any poor word should have to carry on its own. Nowadays, paradigms will buy you a cheap cup of coffee. Poor paradigm has been replaced by the already-shopworn phrase, "thinking outside the box."

janellecharon writes:

I like to think I'm a very good speller, and I think it's mostly due to the massive amounts of books I read as a kid. I always go by what "looks" right, which always seems to work because if I know the word at all, chances are I've run across it somewhere along the line in a book. There are some of those odd exceptions, of course, but for the most part, reading has helped me tremendously.

Cheers,
Janelle

Jimmie writes:

Haha, I have trouble with a couple of words. I haven't figured out any clues for vacuum or for inconvenient, but I did figure out one for Australia. It came about when I was helping my niece with a spelling test and she did the same thing I used to do. Austrailia. Well together we decided to start calling it Aus tra lia so we don't put the trail in there anymore.

mariasmatrix writes:

This was funny. I work at a trademark researching firm and basically, when a client comes up with the name of a new product, we have to research other trademarks that are similar in look, sound or meaning and we do this in a computer database with substitution of characters. So using "broccoli" as an example, we'd have to look for "bro(cc,c,ck,k,kk,x,q)o(l,ll)(i,y,ee)" etc. Needless to say after eight years of working here, spell check is my constant companion when writing in the real world.

writeone writes:

This was short, but darn funny! I have trouble with broccoli as well. And then there are times when I look at a normal, everyday word and think, "Is that right?" I, too, majored in English and friends call me the walking dictionary. Crazey, huh? OOPS, I mean crazy!

alecnuma writes:

It all has to do with the origin of English, in this instance an Italian, that found itself into English without its spelling being "tinkered" with.

How about "neighbour, colour, centre, etc."? All these look perfect to me, because I like to see in my language traces of that Norman invasion ("-eur", evolving into our "-our", comes straight from over the Channel). Yet a US person will prefer "neighbor, color, center, etc.", maybe by instinctive rejection of anything that has to do with French culture, or because massive Italian and Spanish immigration to the US influenced spelling in that way (the "-or" suffix comes straight from Italian and Spanish).

So the way we feel about spelling reveals our cultural background. Cultural "cleansing" starts when certain variants of spelling are imposed artificially on populations, but that has to do with politics, which is a matter not for the writing.com community...

Alex Numa

Carol McKenzie writes:

I have trouble spelling several words. Often I have to go back and correct the copy. Aggravatingly enough, they keeping popping up, especially when I'm not paying attention. (watching TV and writing does not mix.

Here are three of the little dreaded jewels: judgement, dissipate, lightning. I'm not alone, I've found. So many times I've read an author's work and they've spelled lightening instead of lightning. I've seen it spelled wrong in titles of ebooks! Other such mistakes appear in my drafts occasionally, too: "their" instead of "they're" and vice versa. Here's another trip up--"who's" instead of "whose." Grr.

Great article! I like your voice in it, Jessebelle.

Carol McKenzie
http://carol-mckenzie.com
http://xanga.com/carolmckenzie

dogfreek21 writes:

I liked the NL, Jessiebelle!

Fantatic! There are plenty of words that I can spell, and it's not so much not knowing how to spell them, but it's more... forgetting at the last second when writing them... especially

there, their, they're,

and

write, right...and so on. Typos annoy me.

Chriswriter writes:

1. reccomendation 2. reccommendation 3. recommendation 4. recomendation #3 is correct (wait, I'll look it up) yeah, #3, I try to remember 'commend again'

and also

1. definate 2. definnate 3. definite again, #3 is correct, but I have to look it up every dang time! I, too, specialize in words, I'm just not that sure of my spelling talent after I've looked at a word for five minutes and six different spellings.

Jarlaxe writes:

I hate those stupidly simple words that you know you should be able to spell...then when the time comes, you fire a blank!

1. Here's a challenge for you! Give this a try and send me a link; you may be featured in an upcoming issue of the For Authors newsletter. Using the information on lects, above, write a brief character sketch. Then, using that information about your character – individual, family, ethnic, educational, socioeconomic background, etc. – draft a short scene that consists almost entirely of dialogue. Choose the words carefully – make sure they support the background you've given to the character.

2. Which words do you overuse and abuse and strain to the breaking point? I have taken to smacking myself with a plastic ruler every time I see the word "actually" in my writing. Are your favorite authors overly fond of certain words? Which words do you wish they'd expunge from their vocabularies – or at least save for special occasions? Anne Rice has a thing for the word "preternatural." It was an intriguing word the first time it appeared in her novels, but by the fiftieth, it gets old. Share your favorites here.