A Guest Post by Chuck Litka
Like most self-published authors, I publish one English edition for the world. This means that some readers will find words spelled differently, or, dare I say, “wrong.” Or “wrong”. Since, in British English, the period goes outside of the quotation mark. Some readers will also have to translate, if they can, the different English terms for the same item, i.e. cookies vs biscuits, hood vs bonnet. And of course, every region of English speakers and readers have their own phrases and speech patterns, who may find my English off kilter and perhaps, hard to follow. While I don’t see this as a major problem, publishing one version worldwide does has its little issues.
However, if you look at it a little cross-eyed, you can find a silver lining in these little issues. If you’re always going to be wrong somewhere in the world, why not take advantage of that fact? Why not adopt parts of the different Englishes and use them to your advantage? For instance, in British English, unlike American English, you don’t use periods behind Mr or Mrs or any such title. Since that period tells the reader nothing they don’t already know, why waste a keystroke to clutter up your sentence with a useless period in the middle of it? It’s merely a regional convention, and you’re publishing for the world. I’ve eliminated those useless periods.
Adopting different spellings is a lot more risky, since there are readers out there laying in wait to pounce on any preconceived misspellings, especially if you try to mix and match conventions. However, I use the British “grey” rather than the American “gray” because “grey” brings to my mind a sharp, clear color, be it dove grey or battleship grey. Whereas “gray” brings to mind the murky, muddy color of the clay I used to play with as a child. However, beyond that, well, I was (rightly) dinged for my typos, wrong words, and misspellings in my early editions, so I don’t care to venture too much deeper into that potentially dark valley. However, I could see using the British spelling of words for a British character, while using American English for an American character just to add color to the characters. In my stories with British narrators, I turned on the British English spellchecker and used the British spellings, plus as many British terms as I could, though I likely fell woefully short in the latter, given my rather distant view of that variety of English.
And, as I mentioned, there are all those different terms in American and British English for common things. These can be more easily mixed in than the different spellings. I usually use “lift” instead of “elevator” and “flat” instead of “apartment” simply because I like them better, for whatever reason. On the flip side, there are words that mean two different things, for instance, “jumper” which is a sweater in British English, and a dress of sorts in American English, which you might not want to substitute. Still, if we are writing for the world, why not write for the world and use all the English we have at our disposal?
The British convention that I adopted right from the beginning is the single quotation mark – ‘’ – for dialogue, rather than the American double quotation mark – “” – for three reasons.
First, it works just fine. It’s largely invisible. No reader has ever complained about my use of the single quotation marks. And you know they would, if it bugged them.
Secondly, I think that it makes sentences look more streamlined – more elegant. That is just my opinion, of course, but I like how it does the job in a nice, understated way.
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it saves me time, effort, and perhaps some pain as well. I don’t have to stretch and hunt for the shift key for every quotation mark and use two keystrokes for it.
I like to do things efficiently, and hitting one key instead of two for every quote makes my writing just a little more efficient. Of course, I still have to hit the shift key for the capital letter that follows the first quotation mark, but I’m pressing it down for a beat less, and the quotation mark at the end is a pure win. All these tiny movements in typing, repeated millions of times, add up. While I’ve avoided carpal tunnel syndrome so far, I still find that by the end of a final draft of a story, I can feel a bit of soreness in my left pinky finger, my shift key finger, despite using the single quotation mark.
It is said that the English language is the richest language in the world. As writers of English for the world, why not embrace the full scope of English and explore how we can enrich our English from this treasure trove. And, perhaps, save a few keystrokes along the way.
What do you think? What English conventions do you use in your writing? Have I missed some neat English tricks for efficiency and elegance? Or, on the other hand, do you see problems that I don’t in mixing and matching Englishes?
I am an amataur author. I write just for the fun of creating. I’ve enjoyed writing all my life, eventually taking the plunge into self-publishing in 2015. While most of my novels are old fashioned romances — adventures in exotic imaginary worlds, I have written something of a romance, and have just completed something of an old fashioned whodunit. I’m looking to write a Gothic style story next.
Writers Supporting Writers 
I never considered publishing editions with different “Englishes,” even though as a librarian I was aware of different editions of a book with totally different titles for the US and UK markets. Being Canadian, my usage is a mixture of the two, but I hope I’m consistent. Spelling is the British form (colour, neighbour), but not 100%. It’s “tire” for me, rather than “tyre.” (Hey, we have a chain hardware store called “Canadian Tire.”) But I use the American double quotes with punctuation inside. One thing I’ve started to do is use the em dash (in Word, it’s two dashes without spaces on either side). Another thing I find saves time and headaches, is turning off “smart quotes” in Word. Quotation marks are thus rendered as simple vertical strokes, rather than curly ones. Smart quotes often curl the wrong way and look wrong, whereas the simple ones are invisible to readers.
Nice post, Chuck! I’ve read some of your books and was surprised to learn that you live in the US; your British settings (to me) read true to type.
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I’ve never thought of changing anything with what I write to address these kinds of issues. But, I gotta say, I much prefer the British approach to punctuating outside of the quote rather than inside the quote. I’ve never understand that particular Americanism.
And now I need to figure out how to turn off smart quotes — I like what you’re doing with quote marks.
Where this has come into play for me is when I read books published by authors from other parts of the English-speaking world. A couple of my favorite indie writers — one from New Zealand and the other from Australia — regularly use words that force me to stop and think aboiut what they’re referring to. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. And when I come across those words or sayings in their works, it also causes me to stop and wonder what kinds of things I say, or write, as a matter of course that others would need to “interpret.”
It’s a fascinating topic in this inter-connected world we live in. Where every book we publish essentially becomes available everywhere.
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Yes, it’s mind-boggling that so many of us obscure indie authors are also read throughout the English speaking world, if only by a few.
For instructions on how to turn off the smart quotes just google “turn off smart quotes in Word.”
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Just out of curiosity, I looked at my numbers. In the last 90 days on Smashwords 34% of my sales were from the US, 36% were from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, with the balance either unknown or other countries. On Google ,last month 42% of my sales came from the US, about 16% from those British English countries, and the rest from elsewhere. We are writing for the world.
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Yes. Most of my sales are in the U.S., but there are occasionally sales in Canada, UK, Australia, and New Sealand. When you say Google — how are you selling books through Google?
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Through the play store. You have to inquire — I forget just how — and eventually they invite you in. I’ve been in for something like a year and a half, and my (free) sales have grown in recent months to rival those of Smashwords and Amazon, on normal, no new book months. I report my sales on my blog every six months.
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Huh. Never thought of that.
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Interesting post, guys…especially about Google Play. Thanks for that!
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Interesting discussion! I follow the conventions of American English, and I use these conventions consistently throughout the work. I was taught that mixing conventions would be distracting for a reader. It’s been a while, but I have seen submission calls for fiction stipulating that accepted works will be edited to follow the conventions of British English.
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Interesting. I haven’t seen those kinds of submission stipulations, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Not knowing anything about the British English conventions, that would preclude me from submitting.
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According to Oscar Wilde The Canterville Ghost (1887),’We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’. Shaw is credited with ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language’, This post illustrates that very nicely.
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And then there’s this one; “English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
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There are times when I wonder whether there is really something that can be called the English language. All too frequently, it seems like something that is a mish-mash of every other language.
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It can be confusing, but it gives us writers so many words to choose from to get just the right nuance.
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Now imagine an audio book written entirely phonetically… Ignoring localization for now, apostrophes, quotes selection, extraneous periods, commas, exclamation marks and capitalization could all vanish. Silly spellings would also vanish. And the listener would never know it. Considering this, how much more nuance (or noise) do we get from the written vs aurally delivered word?
I deal with I18n (internationalization: i-18 characters-n) in my day job and wonder about all these language variants.
en-GB British English
en-US American English
en-CA Canadian English
en-IN Indian English
en-AU Australian English
en-NZ New Zealand English
en-ZA South African English
Are just a fraction of the options for English localization. Ugh!
Maybe instead of publishing a written story, recording one would be tons easier.
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I am from South Africa and I was taught British English at school. At work, however, we used American English and spelling and I read a lot of both British and American English books. I use a British English editor for my UK and South Africa based books and an American editor for USA set books. I have never used both in one book, but then I’ve never had a mixture of characters like that.
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A perfect example of what inspired Chuck’s post, Robbie. Spoken languages are fluid and change all the time. Written language demands uniformity, but for geographical and cultural reasons, we’ve ended up with a variety of conventions.
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I had to smile at this exploration of English. I use Australian English which, like the Canadian and South African varieties is based on British English but with…extras, some of which are American. 😉 No cookies here, but we too use the double quotes and I’m forever forgetting when to use that damn ‘z’.
I have my home edition of Word set to Australia English, but whenever I comment online, the inbuilt spellchecker is set to American English, and after a while, all those nasty red lines do get to me.
I’ll stick to consistent spelling as much as possible while noting that none of our spelling is ‘pure’ any more.
Great post. 🙂
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I have a good friend who lives in Australia. The slang words and terminology he comes up with are completely unheard of on this side of the Pacific. He once told me that he and his wife were taking a squizz at a place near their home. What?! Turns out it’s just another way of saying “taking a look.” Who woulda thunk it?
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I still trip over those bloody ‘Z’s too. 😀
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I don’t notice different spellings when I’m reading American books or bloggers and different names are mostly familiar to us from film and television. Only occasionally there is fun to be had when I read a character is having biscuits and gravy for breakfast – conjures a totally strange picture of gravy like we have on our roast dinners with chocolate digestive biscuits!
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My issue is when I read something from “over there” and they refer to putting their bags in the boot. What?!?!
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