There are many different speech patterns in English and notions of correctness can vary and change in time and across communities. I think it is a better honor to accept the speech he has grown up with than to try to make it conform to your own.

But opinions may certainly vary on this!

I transcribed it both ways, and the version that is most edited just doesn't feel like him. If his family read it, they wouldn't feel as if they recognized his voice.

It is his story. My opinion

I'm feeling much more confidant now about keeping his exact words because of everyone's responses.

So they will be available to the public.

They're part of a program I'm putting together about how discrimination altered our built environment: exclusionary zoning, redlining, black neighborhoods razed for urban renewal.

I have read up on other people's methodologies, and I wouldn't say there's a consensus, except to edit out the uhs and ums.

But it does seem as if methodologies are changing back to a more accurate rendering of people's speech, and it helps me to know that the people in this forum agree.

One of my ancestors was included in FDR's documentation work program/slave narratives.

You will lose patterns and meanings if you alter them even by the tiniest bit.

Those of you who have weighed in or MIGHT way in that have not had exposure to the older generations dialects might not understand things like 'carried John' or 'goin fa bad' . . .


Let the words said just sit - Miss Gracie was recorded and documented 'as is' and I'm forever grateful for that.

If not for your readers today Femme - then for his descendants in 80 years. Thanks.

I will honor it with my careful and accurate transcription of his words as he spoke them.

Edited to add: it must mean so much to you to have an accurate oral history of your relative. I know some of this man's family, and they have told me how much this will mean to them and their children.