UK vs US Spelling - another question

Just don't diss the R&J show.

They're quitting next year.

For Shady Lane, in answer to her rep-point-comment-question:

In Britain, pants are underwear - briefs, boxers, knickers, whatever you want to call them. Trousers are the long outergarment which I believe Americans call pants.

Aww... they are quitting? It's about time, though... just kidding.

Bah!

scarletpeaches said:

Just don't diss the R&J show.

They're quitting next year.

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...oh god, no.

R&J-certified books always sell so well. A customer might be on the fence about whether or not to buy a book if I liked it, but if it had a Richard and Judy sticker, too, then it was a 99% guaranteed sale.

Crap.

They'll still appear on telly with their occasional book club choices, apparently. Phew!

I've read this with interest. I disagree with clockwatcher though about things like changing Richard and Judy to talk show hosts. I don't want my reading to be generic. I want a feel of time and place, and names and cultural references are part of what gives that to me.

I'm not generally pulled out of writing by spelling (uk vs American), in fact, half the time I couldn't even tell you which books had which spelling, because my brain just does an automatic switchover. (except for gray, which always looks wrong to me, no matter what)

What pulls me out is when I see something like British people talking about say, getting something from the trunk, instead of the boot. So language is way more important to me than spelling, please, don't mess with it.

Also. If i read "dear John, I'm writing you.." then I throw the book across the room. Or I used to. It's so prevalent in American writing that now I juts put the book down, have a walk around until i calm down, and then tread on while trying not to look at the offending sentence.

I read books written by Brits (or Canadians, or Aussies) and published in the US often. Usually -- though not always -- the British spelling and rules are kept as-is.

As it should be.

My Pan Macmillan book says "Will Lavender is from Louisville, Kentucky" on the dust jacket. I'd think a British reader will know what to expect from the spelling and so on. If I see that an author is from London, I expect to read British spelling. Are there people out there who are faced with a "centre" and put the book down in disgust? God I hope not.

Oh I doubt it. But seeing "center" . . . see I feel nauseus just writing it.

CENTER CENTER CENTER CENTER CENTER...

Theatre. I like that better than theater. It has more panache.

When I read Dick Francis books, I'm not pulled out by his terminology. It's British, it's good, it's horsies. Yup.

My MS is chock full of squiggly red lines because I have Word set for American spelling. For some reason my Mac screws up the punctuation if I switch to Canadian.

Interestingly, I got my BA from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

I actually feel ill when I write theater and center too. They look so very wrong. Centre Theatre for me.

ORION said:

CENTER CENTER CENTER CENTER CENTER...

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You're a very evil person. Very evil indeed. You are in fact the very centre of evil.

What if half of your POV characters are American and the other half are English?

My WIP involves US military stationed at a base in England. Each set of characters use their country specific phrasing in speech, and also in thoughts when they are the POV for the scene.

But what do I do about spelling? In the first draft I've gone with the spelling the POV character for that scene would use. Should I stick to that or should I choose one and change the spellings for half of the scenes so they conform to the others?

It would seem equally wrong to write from an English POV about a tire in the middle of the road as it would to write about a tyre from an American POV.

cletus said:

What if half of your POV characters are American and the other half are English?

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Hugh Laurie (see my avatar) wrote a book called The Gun Seller. Although the MC is British (as are a few other characters), there are also plenty of Americans in the bunch.

He wrote it in "British English" because, well, he's British. Even when an American was speaking, he kept the u's in where Americans usually don't (flavour instead of flavor, that sort of thing).

If you normally write with u's in words, call a trunk a boot, I'd say stick with that.

~Nancy

JerseyGirl1962 said:

Hugh Laurie (see my avatar) wrote a book called The Gun Seller. Although the MC is British (as are a few other characters), there are also plenty of Americans in the bunch.

He wrote it in "British English" because, well, he's British. Even when an American was speaking, he kept the u's in where Americans usually don't (flavour instead of flavor, that sort of thing).

If you normally write with u's in words, call a trunk a boot, I'd say stick with that.

~Nancy

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I tend to disagree. Using regional spellings and phrases helps increase the authenticity of a character's POV. That's what I do, anyway.

JerseyGirl1962 said:

If you normally write with u's in words, call a trunk a boot, I'd say stick with that.

~Nancy

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I flip back and forth, depending on my audience.
If I'm talking to my mother, brothers or old friends, I would say trunk.
If I'm talking to my wife, her family, or any of my current workmates and neighbours I'd say boot.

My English characters will NOT say trunk. Likewise, my American ones will NOT say boot. That is non-negotiable.

Phrasing is not a problem, I'm fully bi-lingual because of my circumstances. The spelling is the question.

Interestingly, while working on the first draft I never thought about which to use, it naturally came from the character POV I was writing in.

I personally like the flip-flopping of spelling by POV character, but will it put agents and editors off?

I don't give a shit how the author would speak. I care about how the characters would talk.

Another difference I've noticed, not so much in UK vs US spelling, but in UK vs US grammar, is in the author/agent query communication itself. UK authors report their agents writing things in this format: "I am pleased to offer you representation at this time," whereas it's been my personal experience here in the US that it would be "Not for me!" or "Not what I was hoping it would be!"

See? Altogether different grammar!

What an interesting thread. Interesting to me because I am an American, living and writing in Australia and published in England ... and the stories I write are western novels which are sold, so my publisher tells me, throughout the Commonwealth. In other words, everywhere except in the US. Makes me wonder what the folks in dreary old London think when the old timer in one of my stories answers with cowboy slang. And you think you got troubles.