Big Words, Lost Readers... Wait, Local Slang, Lost Readers Too
Saturday, September 12, 2026
A while back, an author friend of mine - let's call her Dee, from South London - did a reading of her work-in-progress to a small writers' group. Half the room was local. The other half was visiting from Ohio, Toronto, and somewhere in rural Australia. She got to a line describing a scene-stealing side character and read it exactly as she'd written it: "He's so jokes."
Silence. Then one guy from Ohio leaned over and whispered, "Wait - jokes about what? Is he, like, in a legal dispute?"
Dee wasn't writing a legal thriller. "He's so jokes" simply meant he's hilarious - a phrase you'll hear across the UK, the Caribbean, and plenty of AAVE-influenced American English too. To her and half the room, it was completely natural. To the other half, it was a small, confusing pothole they had to swerve around before continuing to read.
That's the whole problem in one sentence, really. Slang and dialect that feel completely natural where you're from can quietly become an inside joke for your postcode - funny and vivid to the people who already get it, and a faint fog to everyone else.
Flavor vs. Fog
To be clear - this is not an argument for scrubbing every trace of place out of your writing. If your character is from Glasgow, they should sound like they're from Glasgow. A character who says "isnae" and "ken" and calls their friend "pal" is grounded, textured, alive. That's good writing. That's voice.
The trouble starts when flavoring tips over into density - when whole paragraphs, especially narration (not just dialogue), require a mental glossary to parse. A sprinkle of dialect gives a reader something to infer from context. A wall of it gives them nothing to hold onto except the growing suspicion that this book wasn't written for them.
There's a difference between a character who sounds like they're from somewhere, and a passage that only makes sense if the reader is from somewhere.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost in Translation
Even without slang, plain old regional vocabulary can quietly derail a scene. Here's a short, chaotic tour of words and phrases that mean something different - or nothing at all - depending on which side of the Atlantic (or which coast, or which continent) your reader is standing on.
- US "pants" vs UK "pants" - trousers on one side, underwear on the other. A classic way to accidentally embarrass a character.
- US "trunk" (of a car) vs UK "boot" - nobody's putting shoes in the car, we promise.
- UK "quite good"- British understatement for "excellent," but an American reader may take it at face value as merely okay.
- UK "fancy" (to like or want someone) vs US "fancy" (elaborate, upscale) - same word, two completely different jobs.
- "y'all," "fixin' to," "hella," Regional US slang like or New England's "wicked" - instantly clear to some Americans, a puzzle to readers a few states or an ocean away.
- US "diaper "vs UK "nappy" - two words, one baby, zero overlap.
- US "vacation" vs UK "holiday" - small swap, but it lands differently every single time.
- US "cookie" vs UK "biscuit" - and don't get anyone started on what Americans call a "biscuit."
- US "apartment" vs UK "flat" - same building, different word entirely.
- US "sneakers" vs UK "trainers" - footwear that somehow needs translating.
- US idiom "hit it out of the park" - vivid if you follow baseball, a shrug if you don't (which is most of the world).
- UK "taking the piss" - obvious to a Brit, genuinely mysterious to an American reader with no context clues.
- UK "chuffed" (meaning pleased) - an American reader might assume the opposite, that someone's annoyed.
And of course, our opening example: "He's so jokes." Said with total confidence, understood by roughly half the English-speaking world, and read as either a compliment or a legal update by the other half.
The Confusion You Don't Even Notice
Here's the part that makes this genuinely tricky: an obvious language barrier is easy to spot. If a character suddenly speaks French, the reader knows to reach for a dictionary or just accept they're missing something. But culturally-specific idioms don't announce themselves. They just slide past - and the reader doesn't always realize they've missed the meaning at all.
A cricket reference will sail cleanly over most American readers' heads the same way a baseball metaphor does for most of the cricket-watching world - and in both cases, the reader may just quietly miss the emotional beat the sentence was going for, without ever knowing there was one to catch.
That's worse than confusion, in a way - it's a silent gap. The joke doesn't land, the tension doesn't build, the character doesn't feel as sharp as you intended, and the reader has no idea why. They just feel a little less connected to the page than they should.
The kind of margin note a confused reader leaves behind - quietly, and usually without telling you.
So Should You Just Write in "Generic English"?
No - and please don't. Readers actively want regional flavor. It's part of what makes a setting feel like a real place and a character feel like a real person instead of a mouthpiece. A Glaswegian who talks like a Californian is its own kind of jarring.
The real issue is density, and where you put it. A little dialect, dropped into a sentence with enough surrounding context, is immersive - the reader can infer roughly what a word means even if they've never heard it before. A paragraph that's entirely built from slang, with no scaffolding to lean on, is a wall. And that wall is far more dangerous in narration than in dialogue, because narration is supposed to be the reader's steady footing in the story. If even the narrator's voice requires translation, there's nowhere left for an outside reader to stand.
Dialogue can carry heavier dialect and get away with it, because readers expect characters to sound like themselves.
Practical Ways to Keep Your Voice Without Losing Half Your Readers
A few habits that help strike the balance:
- Think about your primary market. Are you writing mostly for a US audience, a UK one, or a broad global English readership? That should shape how heavy you go with regional slang.
- Use context clues so meaning can be inferred even by a reader who's never heard the word or phrase before - let the sentence around it do quiet translation work.
- Save the heaviest dialect for dialogue and character voice. Keep narration a little more universally readable, so outside readers always have solid ground to stand on.
- Ask beta readers from outside your region or dialect group to specifically flag any passage that confused them or made them stop and reread.
- Resist the urge to explain slang inline ("he's so jokes, meaning funny") - it kills the flow. Let context carry the weight, or simply use the term sparingly enough that comprehension doesn't hinge on it. The only exception is if one character in the scene has to explain it to another for reason of the story.
Key takeaways: Dialect for flavor, good. Dialect as a wall, risky. Dialogue can carry more of it than narration. Idioms tied to sport, food, or local culture confuse silently - the reader often won't know they've missed something. Beta readers from outside your region are the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy against this.
Your voice matters. Your characters' voices matter even more. Don't sand every regional edge off your writing until it reads like it was generated by a committee trying to please everyone equally - that's its own kind of bland, lifeless failure.
Just be intentional about it. Know the difference between a phrase that colors your world and one that quietly locks the door behind it. Because "he's so jokes" is a genuinely funny, warm little line - right up until it accidentally reads like a legal update to half your audience.
Curious about more of the small choices that shape how readers experience your book? Check out more posts on The Backlist.
If you are interested in a utility that checks your work for too much local language, similar to the AuthorHub Readability Test, just let me know and I'll see what I can whip up!
Hi, I'm Tim Hewitt
CEO of AuthorHub.io
I won my first writing scholarship in high school by beating more than 300 other writers in a nationwide contest, and that award gave me something money couldn't buy: the belief that my words mattered. Since then I've spent decades learning what makes writing work: how to find your voice, how to keep readers turning pages, marketing that really sells books, and how to spot the small craft problems that quietly sink good stories. This blog is where I share everything I've picked up along the way.
