An Excerpt from Editor’s Writer’s Manual
[on writing in dialects]
English speakers do not use a single, uniform version of our language. When we
speak, we each choose from among a number of dialects of English that we have learned.
Consider the different ways we speak to close friends, to classmates and peers, to parents and
other family members, to employers, to lovers, to strangers: in each case, we adjust our speech
mannerisms (or manners) automatically to suit our sense of the audience. Our spoken
dialects also differ in regional accents and idioms.
When we write, however, we tend to select from a more limited range of manners. To
familiar audiences like friends and family we may write informally, in a dialect related to spoken
conversation. To less-familiar audiences we hope to impress—teachers, prospective
employers, persons with authority over us, clients, publishers, readers of our Letters to the
Editor, and many others—we tend to write in one of the dialects known as Standard or Formal
English, depending on the level of formality we think the audience expects.
Command of standard and formal written English can be crucial to our success in school, in our
professions, in public life. But these written dialects are different from the many
dialects we speak so easily and well. They are not readily learned; they must
be studied and practiced; yet we are expected to have achieved competence in them by the time we
finish school. Writing well in these dialects is a major accomplishment; many people,
even in journalism, advertising, publishing, law, and other writing-intensive professions, are
not accomplished writers. Sad to say, many published authors of fiction and other
forms of prose are not, either.
What are often called the “rules” of written English are actually conventions:
widespread agreements to construct sentences in well-defined ways. The conventions are
not absolute, and nobody owns them; they change, though only slowly. Keeping up with the
conventions is part of a writer’s work. We have programmed Editor to assist writers
in applying many of the conventions of good writing, typically as codified in writing
handbooks and style manuals and as understood by well-educated readers. . . .
Editor’s purpose is to complement your study and practice of writing by helping you refine and
polish your prose before presenting it to a critical audience. Learning to polish your
writing provides a bonus: your performance in standard and formal spoken dialects improves, as well.