Converting UK punctuation to US

[HarryT]

This is one of those questions which at first sight looks simple, but then the more deeply you look into it, the more complex it becomes.

To the honest, my response to it would be "why bother"? If a book has British punctuation, that probably indicates that it is a British book, with British spelling, British punctuation rules (which are different to those most commonly employed in the US), and so on. I'd simply accept that UK books are not the same as US books and read each for what it is.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

‘’Twas Zeus’ will, wasn’t it?’

My daughter tells me that the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has ditched this ancient tradition and calls instead for Zeus's ....

(I am not being provincial here. We are, after all, discussing US style.)

(And note that the Chicago Manual has also dropped the traditional full stops in the abbreviation for the United States, bringing us into conformity with -- yes! -- British style.)

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

My daughter tells me that the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has ditched this ancient tradition and calls instead for Zeus's ....

I'm happy to hear that, I've always preferred this myself. Thank you for letting me know! But still you'll have to deal with Zeus' in existing texts (I've made up that example, though).

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

To the honest, my response to it would be "why bother"? If a book has British punctuation, that probably indicates that it is a British book, with British spelling, British punctuation rules (which are different to those most commonly employed in the US), and so on. I'd simply accept that UK books are not the same as US books and read each for what it is.

My interest in this subject goes in the opposite direction -- UK or Australian books published in American English.

Here in Australia, it's most common for books (both physical and digital) to be printed in American English, often physically printed overseas but with a localised cover added before shipping off to the bookshops. (Just gotta love globalisation.) For instance, I was recently given the first novel in an urban fantasy series by John Twelve Hawks as a present; the title was given as "The Traveller" on the cover and spine, but as "The Traveler" throughout the body of the book. I recently bought William Golding's "Lord of the Flies", a British novel from the 1950s, published by Faber & Faber, a British publisher; the copy I received was spelt and punctuated in American English throughout, including phrases actually being altered to modern American idiom, such as "sweets shop" to "candy store". (Shades of Harry Potter!)

I personally find American punctuation and spelling a bit of a speed hump in my reading. (That's not attempting to comment on American English, but on my own cognition habits.) So with e.books I'm likely to re-read, I will sometimes modify the contents to my version of English, so that that doesn't get in the way. (They're only for my own use, so why not?) The process is simplified by my personal preference for double quotation marks with reported speech, but it's still laborious.

Even a step like moving sentence punctuation marks outside quotation marks isn't straightforward, because it depends on context and can't be done by a global search-and-replace. I tend to use broad strokes, and then refine them manually. (And sometimes a spelling checker cn help.)

Hmm. I think I've just affirmed your "why bother?" response.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

the copy I received was spelt and punctuated in American English throughout, including phrases actually being altered to modern American idiom, such as "sweets shop" to "candy store".

As a reader, I don't care much about spelling and punctuation (after having read a book, I usually couldn't tell you whether they had been British or US), but I'd be seriously troubled by the tought that the text may have been tampered with. If a publisher finds the need for doing this (for which they'd need a very good reason), they should at least document the changes they have made.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

As a reader, I don't care much about spelling and punctuation (after having read a book, I usually couldn't tell you whether they had been British or US), but I'd be seriously troubled by the tought that the text may have been tampered with. If a publisher finds the need for doing this (for which they'd need a very good reason), they should at least document the changes they have made.

It's relatively common. It's what editors do - edit.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's relatively common. It's what editors do - edit.

Being a publisher and an editor myself, I'm aware of this -- but this editing is done with the author's consent, and the end-product of this editing process, in which the author is involved, is the published text. Here we are talking about re-editing texts that have already been published, and have become part of our cultural heritage -- I'm doing this myself, too, but it is a different matter.