What'd'ya fink about non-standard spellin' and contractions?' asked the young man, chewing gum still in his mouth.
'Pardon?' said the older man sitting next to him.
'I said What do you think about non-standard spelling and contractions?, repeated the young man.
'I suppose a limited use in dialogue is OK, if it suits the character. You need to expect some readers to trip up, lose the flow, and have to read the sentence again though. At the other extreme, for a character who values accuracy, I would not use contractions at all. Maybe the odd sentence fragment. What do you think?' answered the older man.
'Yea, s'good, innit!' the young man replied.
Oh, do be quiet grammar checkers, there's nothing wrong with a comma splice. Nor with sentence fragments. Especially in dialogue.
Ted Gibson wrote a paper with the title "Dependency syntax is the simplest theory of grammar". I think the first mistake is the title: #grammar is much more than syntax. The problem of the simplicity claim is that other areas of grammar are simply ignored. And other parts of #syntax.
This is my reply:
Rob Bignell, Editor/Author
Chris Brooking
Stefan Müller
The Japan Times