From: mbottorff@lshelby.com   
      
   William Vetter  wrote:   
      
   > >> I ask because other people are talking about spellings that supposedly   
   > >> express English dialects.   
   > >   
   > > I'm not attempting to duplicate any particular English dialect, and I   
   > > hadn't planned to use variant spellings.   
   >   
   > "Out of the pan and into the far."   
   > I told him that he spelled _fire_ wrong.  He wrote back to me and said   
   > this was how people spoke it in rural Kentucky.   
      
   I think it's pretty silly to expect every reader of English everywhere   
   will a) be familiar with a Kentucky dialect, and would therefore b)   
   recognize that far was therefore not a typo for fire.   
      
   But at the same time, not being very good at figuring out what the   
   reader won't know is one of my biggest weaknesses, so I feel like I'm   
   the pot calling the kettle black when i say that.   
      
      
   Out of curiousity...   
      
   Would seein' words like bein', doin' and hearin' throw you?  :)   
      
   I used those back in the second and third books I wrote.  Although I've   
   mostly avoided phonetic spelling since then (I'm currently on book 14),   
   I haven't given up on someday revisiting those two books.   
      
   I don't currently see any reason for editing those out.  I don't think   
   they're particularly confusing or difficult to read.   
      
   But I read a fair number of Westerns growing up, so I might be biased.   
   :)   
      
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