ROBUST discussion

“Ratshit” — a really good reason for novelists to give dialect a miss
http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar...

Semi-related:

Recently I was having a discussion about Regency slang in a historical fiction group.

It's interesting because certain authors, most notably Georgette Heyer, put a lot of Georgian/Regency slang in their books. The first time I read a Georgette Heyer book, I was rather confused for much of it because I didn't know what the heck many people were talking about. It was, in her case, all very accurate (since it wasn't intended to be current) but there were some accessibility issues.

One thing that struck me, though, is that I've read a good portion of Georgian/Regency era literature and, as a reasonably educated fellow, had little trouble with accessibility. Of course, a lot of this has to do with the fact that the authors writing in those periods avoided a lot of slang and particular dialect for social respectability reasons.

It's just funny that I had to work harder to properly understand books written in the 20th century as opposed to the 19th and 18th centuries.
cetera.

I tend to write about achievers, movers and shakers, and those usually wish to communicate with the least wasted motion, and thus speak neutral English, unless politically motivated.

Ironically, in my forthcoming twelve-book set, COLD WAR, HOT PASSIONS, I have more Ukranian slang (Ukrainian is itself a dialect of Russian) than I had Australian slang in my single Australian-set book, FESTIVAL