Notes by an editor on dialect usage maccounts
byinterviews with ex~s1aves .  (~o1i ubed ~
conjunction With Supplementary Instructfons 9E.)


	Simplicity in recording the dialect is to be desired in örder to hold the interest and attention of the readers. It seems to me that readers are i~pelled by pages sprinkled with iuisspe1l~ ings, commas and apostrophes. The value of exact phonetic trans— cription.is, of course, a great one. But few artists attempt this completely. Thomas Nelson Page was meticulous in his dia-fl lect; Toel Chanìdler Harris less meticulous but in my opinion even more accurate. But the values they sought are different from the values that I believe this book of slave narratives should have. Present day readers are less ready for the over— stress of phonetic spelling than in the days of local color. ~~uthors realize this: Julia Peterkin uses a riodified Gullah in— stea~ of Gonzales‘ carefully spelled out Gullah. ~Toward Odum has :~uestioned the use of ~oin‘ for going since the g is seldom pronounced even by the educated.

	T~ith to idiom is ~~ore im~portant, I believe, than truth to pronunciation. Erskine Caidwell in his stories of Georgia, Ruth 3uckow in stories of Iowa, and ~ora ITeale Hurston in stories of ~‘1orida Tegroes get a tnith to t~e ::anner of speaking without excessive misspellings. In order to make this volume of slave n~trratives :~ore appealing and less difficult for the average reader, I recommend that truth to idiom be paramount, and exact tii~th to pronunciation secondäry.
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