Which English to use; Canadian? American? British?

[Hermit]

As a Canadian I use our native version of English which isn't acceptable in the U.S. On the other hand, the U.S. version isn't accepted here. In Britain, neither is acceptable.

So how do you write? Or re-write I guess....would you rewrite everything if you were submitting to the U.K.? And another version to the U.S. markets and yet another to the Canadian markets?

I'm sure the publisher would take care of this when a book is published but what about when you're sending manuscripts and trying to get a foot in the door? How the heck can you adjust 100,000 words to fit? Does it make a difference?

[AdamH]

I don't know what's right or not. So I'd be interested to learn this to. But what I've been doing is write in Canadian. Then if I submit something to the U.S. I use the spell check option that's equipped on my friendly neighbourhood computer word processor and change all those squiggly red lines I see into American. Presto, "centre" becomes "center".

[Jamesaritchie]

I haven't found American English to be unacceptable in either Canada or the U.K. I do use punctuation to fit the country I'm submiting to, but other than this, I leave it alone. If, for example, a U.K. editor wanted a story tyhat sounded like someone from the U.K. wrote it, then why would he want one of mine?

Where changes in English are necessary for understanding, it's been my experience that editors handle it just fine.

I would suggest you look at how Robert J. Sawyer goes about it.

[scribbler1382]

I'm Canadian and I've been writing using U.S. English for so long, I sometimes can't remember Canadian spellings. Part of this is because of my day job, as a Tech Writer. Every company I've ever worked for used U.S. English, since that's where the lion's share of our customers were. That's pretty much how I approach my fiction, as well. I want to sell into U.S. markets, so I use U.S. English. If a U.K. market demanded U.K. English, I'd probably just change the Language module in Word and do a spell check. But really, there's not that many differences between them. Mostly the "our" vs. the "or" approach to suffixes. And the "ise" instead of "ize" for the U.K.

Unless you mean stuff like calling an elevator a "lift" and a television a "telly", in which case I don't bother.

[reph]

You can expect a publisher to impose house style on everything it publishes. Don't worry about choices like -our/-or.

[Bufty]

If you've written a good story, I don't see that it's going to be rejected because you used Uk or US or whatever english and words. I'm Scots and I know what a sidewalk or an elevator is - why presume an editor doesn't?

[KTC]

I write everything in Canadian English. My California editor changes it when editing. I'm Canadian and that's how I write. He knows I'm Canadian and makes jokes about our bad spelling...but has never asked me to write in American english.