There’s a piece of dialect – Oo wer she wee war she wi im or war she wee hersen – that will be instantly recognisable to Yorkshire folk.

Here’s another – tin tin tin.

And why is a Sheffielder known as a Dee Dah? Nah den dee what’s da doin’?

I recently received a lovely fan letter (pictured) with a comment on the dialect that set me thinking more deeply about this. I use dialect sparingly, as the last thing an author wants is for the reader to be taken out of the story because they’re scratching their head over the language.

Does dialect add to the reader experience?

When I began to write the Sheffield Sagas I really didn’t think about whether to include dialect. It just happened, without my say-so. That distinct Yorkshire tone first appears on page two of The Ragged Valley, where Silas is caught in the rain without a cap and hears his father’s words inside his skull – Tha not made o’ sugar, are tha? Won’t melt, will tha?

This is the language of my childhood, and a dialect I still hear when I go home to Sheffield. It’s real. On the page, it adds texture to the story and can reveal a lot about a character. Dialect is an effective ‘show, don’t tell’ device. And it’s wonderful to learn from readers who are from Yorkshire that they can ‘hear’ the dialogue being spoken.

But there is a balance to be struck.

I read aloud the dialogue in my novels to ensure that, where there’s a sprinkle of dialect, it ‘sits’ well and doesn’t overwhelm the reader. As a reader, I’m occasionally drawn away from the emotion of the story if I encounter a long passage written exclusively in dialect. On the other hand, when I come across a word or phrase I don’t understand, there’s satisfaction to be had from looking it up and learning something new.

The examples I give at the top of this blog would probably be too much of a distraction on the page, unless obfuscation was the point of the scene. Here’s the language tidied up. It’s lost some of its colour, hasn’t it?

Who was she with? Was she with him or was she by herself?

It isn’t in the tin.

Now then, you, what are you doing?

What, indeed?