T-Rex: BEFORE we had dictionaries, words could be spelt in a variety of different ways. Now that we have dictionaries, spellings are fixed.
T-Rex: This I accept!
T-Rex: It speeds up reading AND comprehension, and spelling errors give editors "easy points" when looking for something to edit. FINE. But we've lost the ability to encode the way words are spoken: the pronunciation and accents of a speaker! We can get a little of that back through capitalization and creative! punctuation! but still - it's hard in text to tell an Australian from an American, assuming they're both speaking English.
T-Rex: The result of this is a proliferation of stereotypes!
Utahraptor: How so?
T-Rex: Well, say I'm writing a story about Australian Batman and I want to show people that Batman's Australian now. Spelling means I can't rely on his accent, so I'm forced to have him call people "mate" and grimly refer to "shrimps" placed upon "barbies". It's the only way!
Utahraptor: Um - pretty sure there are others!
Narrator: LATER:
Off panel: And FINALLY, you could just have the narration mention the fact that Batman's Australian, and leave it at that. You don't need to rely on pseudo-racist stereotypes!
Floating Batman head: 〚in T-Rex's imagination〛 T-Rex! Just put me in a Crocodile Dundee hat!!
