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Dear Pat, Thanks for another brilliant posting. Your "cowboy" dialect is correct, acceptable, and functional among other cowboys or people who expect you to sound like a cowboy. In a cowboy setting, a "network dialect" would call attention to itself and thus diminish the power of the poetry or literature that you were attempting to communicate. However, don't expect the networks to hire cowboys to do the news anytime soon. They might hire as a broadcaster an occasional "Dizzy Dean" (anyone out there remember the fuss kicked up by the English teachers when Dizzy talked about a player who "slud" into third base?) The way to become a Dizzy Dean is to become an outstanding baseball player. If you do, listeners will tolerate, even find amusing, the way you talk. On that note, I would like to invite you to attend the National Cowboy Symposium in Lubbock next September. Last year the event attracted more than 10,000 for a week of poetry, entertainment, rodeo events competition, chuck wagon cook-offs among 35 major ranches, and a Sunday morning breakfast/worship that featured Ron Moore and his Cowdog Will. Don Garnett