star wars - Why are R2-D2 and C-3PO spelled phonetically in outside media?

Does anyone know why R2-D2 is spelled Artoo-Detoo and C-3PO is spelled See-Threepio in the script and in other media outside the movies?

I've always found this very annoying and it took away from the artificial-ness of the characters trying to make them more 'real'.

I always connected with these characters knowing they were man-made, but still showed emotions and, well, character.

Spelling their names phonetically ruins this illusion and makes me think they are TRYING to be more human or more like organic life, which I thought was never true to who they were.

Examples:

Example 1 Example 2

Answer

In a screenplay or script it's generally better to write things out as they are going to be pronounced, even if you wouldn't do that in regular writing. It's clearer for the actors, and since script length is often used to guess the running time, writing things out phonetically makes the script more "honest".

So that's why you would ever write something like "See Threepio" down instead of "C-3PO". Now the movie's been made and you want to start making toys. What do you put on the box? Well, you can't use the movie itself for reference, because the character's name isn't spelled out anywhere on screen. So you refer to the script, which has "See Threepio", which is kind of silly because everybody else writes "C-3PO", but the writing in the script is more "official", so you compromise and write both on the packaging.

You'd have to learn more about languages in the Star Wars universe to figure out what the names really are. Since they aren't speaking English, it's not clear if they are really acronyms (like R2D2), or if they just happen to sound like acronyms to us so we write them that way.

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