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Originally Posted by paulsalter
spoken portions is mainly what I was meaning, but even sometimes the narration seems wrong, if I am reading a book by a US author it would seem odd to me if it started using UK terms (car boot instead of trunk as example)
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Again, I guess it would depend on the circumstance. If it was in dialogue, I would expect them to stick to the character's background in such situations. But in the narration, all bets are off. I brought the issue up less concerned with local expressions/words, and more with spellings of common words ("realise" vs. "realize", "maneuver" vs. "manoeuvre", etc.).
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another odd one I found, book I read recently based in UK not sure where the author was, but when driving in the car it was using KM/H, that didnt feel right in a UK book
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Yes, that is an interesting one. Almost as interesting as the fact that you haven't switched to KM/h yet!
It's fascinating to me how different parts of the former British Empire have metricised to different degrees. Like in Canada we still measure a person's height in feet/inches, and their weight in pounds. Yet we buy our gas/milk/juice/etc. in litres, we drive in KM/h, and the temperature is usually discussed in celsius. It's a real mish-mash. And from talking to people in the UK, Australia, and NZ, what units of Imperial Measure are still common, and what units of metric have become common, are different in each place.
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I am re buying some books I have in paperback at the moment, so when I come to some US terms I will check the paperback to see what that has in it
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Thanks, I would really appreciate that!