What's more, ketzai booklets were originally intended for ordinary people. The vocabulary is common and colloquial, and Mandarin characters phonetically similar to the Taiwanese word are often used in place of the correct written characters.
此外，歌仔冊原是給市井小民看的，文字大多通俗、口語化，而且採「擬音借字」來表達。像是「都知道」寫為「攏知影」，「沒有用」則為「沒路用」；蒼蠅叫「戶蠅」，賭博是「拔皎」等。