Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
So why is it that some books published in the UK use US punctuation? That makes things inconsistent in the UK (IMHO).
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They don't use USA usage of em-dash in asides without spaces.
Most UK publishers, if not all, now use single quotes outer dialogue. There are now much fewer publishers, loads of imprints.
Examples picked from my 3,000 approx paper books. I think double quotes was more common in the past. However the oldest books, in a big set of 10, are Kipling original release 1893, my edition is 1899, published by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Doesn't have Puck of Pook's Hill because it wasn't published till 1906. Single Quotes, massive long dashes with no space for asides, longer than
his and cut off speech about x2 size! It's in lovely condition. Must be good paper.
Publishers have house styles.
Penguin: Always single quotes outer dialogue.
Bloomsbury in Harry Potter era, also single quotes, but the spaced dash looks very like an em-dash, but a strange font.
Corgi (paperback Terry Pratchett) single quotes outer dialogue. Massively long em-dash for broken off speech.
These used double quotes
Blackwood: At least up to late 1930s
Heron Books (maybe a book club), hardbacks: double quotes.
Blackie & Son (London, Glasgow, India and Canada). Oddly uses US style em-dash without spaces for asides in the example, "For The School Colours" by Angel Brazil. Original release 1918, but my undated edition looks like 1940s paper.
Ward Lock & Co, a 1910 edition of "Lord Oakburn's Daughters" by Mrs Henry Wood.. The asides are about 2.5 letters long, no spaces and cut off speech about 4.5 letter long, nearly full length of "
young"
Modern Harper Collins Paperback (Garth Nix, Australian author with England visits). UK printed & published and UK website. The em-dash for cut-off speech is about 2.5x an en-dash. Asides use en-dash with spaces and it's about 2x the size of a hyphen.
There are not many Irish publishers and fewer still publishing in Irish, but double quotes would be common, especially for Irish.
Usually the dash for cut off speech is about twice that of dash for an aside, which may or may not have spaces on older texts.
There is an amazing variation in size of en and em dash between publishers and you won't mistake the en-dash even on smallest for hyphen, which is very consistent in size.
The only book I've seen with sans-serif is a Gill & Macmillan (Dublin). It's a reference book, so has no dialogue. As is common, words in quotes use single quotes.
Irish or UK books with double quotes for dialogue will often also use single quotes for a word or phrase that has to have quotes on it.
Edit:
I carefully avoided any USA direct imports, which are more common in Ireland than the UK.