[LuvReadin]

Originally Posted by Muckraker

When the same word means two completely different things depending on the country you are in it is essentially a different language--for that word at least.

Sorry, no - there needs to be a vast difference to make a collection of words into different languages; until then, they are dialects at most.

Originally Posted by Muckraker

What I assume is that 350million potential American readers will get the wrong idea if I toss a faggot on the fire. Will my potential readers in England be completely baffled by me tossing a bundle of sticks on the fire?

No. Neither will they get the wrong idea if you refer to a 'fanny pack' instead of a 'bum bag' or refer to someone having 'bangs' rather than a 'fringe' (although they might snigger a bit). Does this make the English readers smarter than the Americans? Well, clearly you must think so - I doubt most of them would agree!

Originally Posted by Muckraker

I am a lover of language but I have no intention of writing something I know will transmit the wrong idea to the bulk of my potential readers just because I think other people should love the intricacies of language as much as I do.

Excuse me, but that's exactly what you are in danger of doing. You are setting yourself up as the beginning of a chain of Chinese Whispers, drawing the text further and further away from the author's intended meaning, and possibly ending up, if other people repeat your process, with something that is unrecognisable from the original.

Originally Posted by Muckraker

I did essentially that. I just offered the opt-in as the default option. I'll change the word to preserve the flow and if the readers of the young-adult fantasy novel want further information they have it. Keeping a word that breaks the spell and then further breaking the spell with a footnote in a kid's fantasy novel is not something I'm interested in doing. Readers can choose to go the original route by just reading the original novel.

And how precisely, are they going to do that if you don't tell them what you've done (which, from what you've written previously, you don't)? And even if you do, why should readers go to the trouble of re-reading a book just so they can get the original? I'm sorry, but this appears to be much more about your likes/dislikes and your belief in what the text 'should' be, than either the author or the reader.

Originally Posted by Muckraker

I didn't say it was a minor change. I said it was a major change to a minor detail. Saying "John saw a Ford Escort drive by," is a major change from "John saw a Chevy Malibu drive by." But it is a minor detail that does not affect the story.

Again, how do you know this is a 'minor detail'? Only because you found it to be so on your reading of the book. It might well have meant something extremely significant at the time, and yes, possibly something that by now, might have significance only for a tiny proportion of the people that read it, but again, how can this possibly be your call to make?

Originally Posted by Muckraker

If readers want to determine on their own whether my change majorly affected the original story then they have all the data there to make that determination. It's fully documented.

Then forgive me if I've misread your previous comments (as apparently, so have others), because it seemed to me you were making these changes without calling attention to them in any way whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Muckraker

The quality of the work suffers then. If a sentence makes no sense to anyone that reads it, the writer is not there to confirm their intention, and you publish it as-is then you have just published an inferior product. The publisher correcting the mistake has created a product that is better than yours and better than the original. Why in the world should we perpetuate a mistake simply because it was already made?

At the risk of repeating myself yet again (and apparently repeating what you've said just below this comment), if such a correction is deemed necessary (and I would want to have more than one person deciding this), then it should be clearly marked and explained, and it should not be an excuse for substituting with what you think is a less offensive word. So change 'fagot' to 'faggot' by all means if you think that would be a more recognised spelling, provided it's done with a footnote and/or explanation, but don't change it to 'stick' just because it happens to offend your sensibilities.