Our church had to stay baroque and afloat not b-roke and awash.
baroque and broke wordplay here: not sure how to write out bahroke meaning broke
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2I think you just did.– Double UCommented Mar 27, 2019 at 14:31
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3Yeah, I got it on the first read too.– CynCommented Mar 27, 2019 at 15:07
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@Cyn I feel like this question is more along the lines of "What do styleguides say about formatting a pun in writing so that the audience will be more likely to notice the similar sounds?" This feeling is mainly because I have never seen a hyphen used like in "b-roke" for such an emphasis and the question then mentions "bahroke" which looks like an attempt at easy-to-understand phonetic spelling. Is it normal to use a hyphen for this, easy-to-understand phonetic spelling, nothing and letting a character explain it or just hope that the audience will get it?– SecespitusCommented Mar 27, 2019 at 18:31
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@Secespitus It is normal to use a hyphen. I see it all the time. For puns/jokes, for academic writing where the purpose is to emphasize etymology, for political writing to focus on certain meanings, and just plain old dialect to show how a character is pronouncing a word.– CynCommented Mar 27, 2019 at 18:37
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@Cyn Then I think that is an answer to this question. I only see this sometimes in English texts. Like in my last comment where I used it for the words "easy-to-understand". But I always thought that was informal and people would try their best not to write like this in published books, academic writing, ...– SecespitusCommented Mar 27, 2019 at 18:42
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1 Answer
It is normal to use a hyphen.
I see it all the time.
- For puns/jokes.
- For academic writing where the purpose is to emphasize etymology (when the crux of the argument requires redefining or reemphasizing certain words).
- For political writing to focus on certain meanings.
- And just plain old dialect to show how a character is pronouncing a word.
Changing the spelling of a word to render the phonetics as needed is also acceptable in certain contexts. Though in this specific example, I'd prefer "bah-roke" to "bahroke."