eye dialect

The representation of regional or dialectal variations by spelling words in nonstandard ways, such as writing wanna for want to.

Examples and Observations:

• "When de fros' is on de pun'kin an' de sno'-flakes in de ar',
  I den begin rejoicin'--hog-killin' time is near."
  (Daniel Webster Davis, "Hog Meat")



• "Some eye dialect forms have become institutionalized, finding their way into dictionaries as new, distinct lexical entries:

  helluva . . . adv., adj. Informal (intensifier): a helluva difficult job, he's a helluva nice guy.
  
  whodunit or whodunnit . . . n. Informal: a novel, play, etc., concerned with crime, usually murder.

  In both these examples, the deviant elements--'uv' for 'of,' 'dun' for 'done'--are totally deviant from standard spelling."
  (Edward A. Levenston, The Stuff of Literature: Physical Aspects of Texts and Their Relation to Literary Meaning. SUNY Press, 1992)



• "The lease said about my and my fathers trip from the Bureau of Manhattan to our new home the soonest mended. In some way ether I or he got balled up on the grand concorpse and next thing you know we was thretning to swoop down on Pittsfield.
  
  "Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
  
  "Shut up he explained."
  (Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrunts, 1920)



• "Avoid the use of eye dialect, that is, using deliberate misspellings and punctuation to indicate a character's speech patterns. . . . Dialect should be achieved by the rhythm of the prose, by the syntax, the diction, idioms and figures of speech, by the vocabulary indigenous to the locale. Eye dialect is almost always pejorative, and it's patronizing."
  (John Dufresne, The Lie That Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction. Norton, 2003)