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Janet:

Feel free to rant; a wedding is totally stressful, won't even go into what happened at mine.  And not to capitalize on your stress, but my character goes through a wedding disaster of all wedding disasters toward the end of my first book, and now you have given me grist for how to make it even worse.  lol  Sorry, but that's what happens when you rant on a writer's forum, instead of Facebook.  lol

Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:

Memphis Trace wrote:

I would counsel writers not to worry about using irregular verbs. Interested readers are almost never confused, irregardless—yes, irregardless is a word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless, and a valuable one for certain uses—of which you choose between verbs. Pedants may snicker at you, but irregular verbs are a sure way for creating a voice for your non-stuffy character. Even if your POV slips up and gets one right instead of wrong, it is more of a commentary on pedantry than it is on communication to interested readers.

Memphis Trace

In dialogue in order to create a speech pattern or persona, using bad grammar is acceptable, but not in narrative.

I am sure Mark Twain missed this wise counsel when he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In narrative, it is a particularly effective way to add 'voice'. ¿If a character talks using irregular verbs, surely he thinks and stews in his juices in the vernacular?

For instance, a character who uses irregardless is not going to shed his pomposity—or his ignorance of eager linguists' fear and loathing of the now irregular word—should he shut his mouth long enough to have a coherent thought. Here is how Ring Lardner used it at least once in his story, The Big Town, 1921: I told them that irregardless of what you read in books, they's some members of the theatrical profession that occasionally visits the place where they sleep.

Irregardless of what eager linguists may think of irregardless, I would point to Lardner's effective usage as a guide for creative writers trying to find and enhance their 'voice' in a work.
     
Memphis Trace

My opinion is that there is something askew with one's language ability if he has not already learnt those "irregular" verbs of his native language, should that be spoken consistently at home, before he has gone to school to learn those rules for "regular" verbs, often of foreign origin.  U.K.-standard "kept," "wept", "learnt", "spelt" are good and ancient English, and the American "regular" -ed forms, whether standard or not, are an informal means to spelling reform but often seem unnatural to the native speaker who will have internalized the good and ancient language of his ancestors before he can have remembered he has done so.

Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:

I just never thought I'd cause such a stir just by acknowledging the woman's passing.

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