So far I’m writing scenes from the points-of-view of a young woman who grew up on the ‘mean streets’ of a massive spacestation and a middle-aged man who runs a galactic-scale business with his grown children. They are VERY different!

I was raised in a poor part of the North of England and my family speaks a broad Yorkhire dialect. (I’m sure you know the kind of thing: “There’s nowt so queer as folk,” “Ee up, love, you’ll never ger oop t’stairs in that clobber,” and so on.) I spoke like that too as a youngster. I still slip back into it when I go ‘home’.
When I went to university and moved away from the North, I gradually lost my accent and adopted that of the people around me – who were almost all from the South. Now my family deride me for my ‘posh’ accent.

I think perhaps it was having such a strong accent, and speaking a dialect other people found hard, or comical, that made me so aware of language when I was very young. It was pretty obvious that the people on the BBC, and the people who wrote the books I was reading, were speaking almost another language to the one I spoke at home. (In fact, it was a huge delight to me when I first read Wuthering Heights to find all the dialect in there I was so familiar with.)

I have no quarrel with anyone’s dialect or accent. I’m pretty sure that ‘Cowboy’ English is as good as anyone else’s. The important thing for a writer is to know how to communicate to their readership. I expect there are genres where writing in ‘Cowboy’ would not seem out of place Yet my comments on a mastery of spelling and grammar would still hold even in ‘Cowboy’. I wouldn’t seem at all literate if I spoke ‘Cowboy’ yet couldn’t spell hi-phallootin, would I?

I think different dialects add to the charm of a country and I’m proud of my own linguistic heritage. However, it seems to me that books for a wide audience really ought to be written in ‘standard English’ (either the UK or the American version – Australian English is so close to UK English that I won’t make a big thing about it here) so that most readers can read them without difficulty. Having said that, if the book is written in the first person, I think it is important to get the ‘voice’ of the narrator correct – and that might mean writing in dialect. Similarly, dialogue within the book should respect the speaker’s dialect.

There is a grey area that I’m still struggling with. I tend to write stories from multiple points of view – often changing POV with each scene (but not within scenes.) I also tend to write what is called ‘deep POV’ where we go deeply into the thoughts and feelings of the character whose POV we are experiencing. Unconscously at first, but now quite deliberately, each character’s deep POV means that I change the ‘voice’ I am using to match the character’s own voice. Hopefully, I do this subtly, changing the style and vocabulary of the narration just enough to make the reader feel they are with a different character. I’m not sure this is the best way to do it – it is certainly not every writer’s choice! – but I shall keep on experimenting.

I live in the western US. The people I grew up around, at my father’s country auction, often spoke “Cowboy”. The thicker their “Cowboy” accent, the harder it was to communicate with them sometimes, especially after I went away to college and returned home with better spoken grammar.

Let me explain my dilemma: I had to work in the office at my dad’s auction. Communication with his customers was profoundly important and our family’s income depended upon it. Therefore, I had to adapt.

I spoke proper English by night and “Cowboy” by day, slipping into our native dialect to build good customer relations. I know it sounds very closed-minded, but to my father’s auction customers–people who bought used furniture and boxes of old magazines for petty cash–my highfalutin English sounded condescending to them. It was bad for business.

So yes, it’s nice to have good grammar when communicating with world-wide English speakers on the Internet or in a published novel, but it isn’t always good for business at a local level. Spoken English must follow different rules than written English.

I hope you don’t mind hearing my opinion. I wanted to share my unique perspective.

It’s all about control. Just as a sculptor must understand stone and tools and their own strength, a writer must understand language. Without this knowledge (among others) one cannot hope to get precisely the effect one strives to achieve.

As for sentence fragments, I’m a big fan of Robert Goddard but his excessive use of sentence fragments does sometimes drive me nuts.

And amen to giving attention to how we speak. Aside from your very pertinent comments, Graham, I would say if you aren’t aware of your own verbal style it’s nigh impossible to write dialogue that sells character effectively. A story where the characters all sound the same will get boring pretty fast!