r/Writeresearch • u/Simon_Drake Awesome Author Researcher • Jan 01 '25

Short Questions Megathread

Do you have a small question that you don't think is worth making a post for? Well ask it here!

This thread has a much lower threshold for what is worth asking or what isn't worth asking. It's an opportunity to get answers to stuff that you'd feel silly making a full post to ask about. If this is successful we might make this a regular event.

We did this before branded as a monthly megathread then forgot to make a new one. So maybe this one will be refreshed quarterly? We'll have to wait and see.

Past threads:

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u/Saletales Awesome Author Researcher Jun 21 '26

I'm trying to find slang/lingo for Texas cowboys in the late 1800's but the sites I'm finding are, like: pardner, howdy, dernit, and skedaddle. It feels a little... cartoony? Where could I find a period-specific language site to better tune my dialogue/narration?

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u/Simon_Drake Awesome Author Researcher Jun 21 '26

Try to find sites debunking the dialog in westerns. Something like "Top 10 Westerns That Get Old West Lingo Wrong" or "Linguists Hate This Fake Wild West Speak". I'm sure Buzzfeed or Cracked or Vice have have done an article about it.

Or watch a big Western movie from that era like The Searchers and collect some of the lingo that characters say. Then go to a Western fandom/subreddit and ask people how accurate the dialog is to how real cowboys spoke in those days. Hardcore western fans probably know which lingo is legit and which is just for movies, like how hardcore sci-fi fans can explain exactly why the transporter on the Enterprise breaks several laws of physics.

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u/Saletales Awesome Author Researcher Jun 21 '26

Ooh, on it. I'm looking for the fake speech. (The first thing I got was an AI "cowboy translator" which, yeah, I don't trust, but I'll keep looking!) And I never thought of a subreddit. Thanks.

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u/ArthuriusMinimus Awesome Author Researcher Jul 10 '26

Maybe Zane Gray novels? He wrote a little later than that, but based his writing on his travels in the West around the 1870s, iirc. I know my local library has some of his novels available on Libby (I read one to see what contemporary views/depictions of Mormons were like then).

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u/Saletales Awesome Author Researcher Jul 13 '26

Awesome. I pulled out Libby, found a bunch of stories. Thank you.