British vs American spelling in books?

[jackm8]

As nonnative English speaker, this has bothered me for years. I've bought books thorough UK Amazon that had American spelling (amongst those, complete works of Shakespeare, ironically), and just lately, I've even come across two different volumes of the same book on Project Gutenberg that are each in different spelling. It's not a major issue, I guess that there's just something in me that likes to read words as they were written. I've learned to look at publishers to discern a bit, but it's really not perfect. For modern books it is usually the norm that they are each issued in spelling, based on where publisher is based, but for classics it's possible to find modern American based publishers that publish in British spelling, and British publishers that import modern pulp as is.
What I'm really puzzled about is, why isn't it ever mentioned in which spelling the book is issued? It's never mentioned on marketplaces, Amazon, Nook, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive. Only sure way of knowing for me is downloading a sample, when available, and searching for armour/armor colour/color in it. Why is that?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jackm8

for classics it's possible to find modern American based publishers that publish in British spelling, and British publishers that import modern pulp as is.

No biases here!

No American classics, no British junk fiction. Good to know.

Dickens tended to use American spelling. And many classics were written before spelling was standardized. Which do you prefer, as originally written or edited to some standard? It's obvious you think one standard is better than the other.

[theducks]

I prefer the original English spelling by the Author , no matter what country it was from. How else can you learn different cultures

I am also not adverse to having a Glossary included , especially for local slang.

[JSWolf]

I prefer the original spelling in current books. But if the book is written in the UK, I want US punctuation as I don't like UK punctuation.

I don't like single quotes instead of double. En-dash looks like a dash and em-dash is much preferred. I don't like space before and after an em-dash and elipse.

The other issue is that the UK needs to standardize. Some books are the UK way and some the US way and those are books written and published in the UK. I think the UK should use the US way as it look better.

[DNSB]

The problem with spelling and typography is the number of people who will insist that way that they learned it is the only way. See post #4 in this thread for a fine example.

[Sirtel]

I don't particularly care what the spelling is (as long as it is correct, of course). In fact, I may not even notice if it's British, American, Australian, Canadian or whatever, aside from something extremely obvious like color/colour. I may find it weird if they use British spelling in an American thriller or American spelling in Harry Potter, but it doesn't overly bother me. BTW, I'm also a non-native speaker.

When there are both UK and US editions available to me, I usually just buy whichever is cheapest.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I prefer the original spelling in current books. But if the book is written in the UK, I want US punctuation as I don't like UK punctuation.

I don't like single quotes instead of double. En-dash looks like a dash and em-dash is much preferred. I don't like space before and after an em-dash and elipse.

The UK and Ireland use single or double quotes for outer dialogue. Depends on publisher and era.

An en-dash only looks like a hyphen if you have a bad font. UK doesn't do spaces on em-dash, only en-dashes used like bracketing commas. Broken off speech on UK/Ireland is em-dash with no spaces. An ellipsis can have different functions. It can show elided content such as one side of a phone conversation (and space before and after is common), or can show a range instead of "to" or "-" and then no space is common. It can signify trailing off speech instead of a "period", and then often no space before, space after and then new sentence.

Publishers have style guides to cover the areas of punctuation that are not 100% definitive.

Many punctuation marks are multi-purpose, like a hyphen is a word-joiner or to split a word at the end of a line. The ’ is used for three purposes, or four if you count a Title different to dialogue, but not for feet or minutes, those use ′ (prime). Also nested quotation in dialogue uses the alternate quote system.
Typewriter single quote ' is almost always wrong and " always wrong, except in programming or CSV files etc.

What I hate is Gutenberg formatting UK or Irish books with entirely USA punctuation for dashes. I quite accept USA published/written books using the USA scheme.

But with ebooks and and editor you can have your own scheme.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jackm8

…
but for classics it's possible to find modern American based publishers that publish in British spelling, and British publishers that import modern pulp as is.

British & Irish licenced local published USA authors have always used the original spelling. It's the USA that's the worst.
Gutenberg mostly uses original spelling but mostly USA punctuation even if there was never a USA edition.
English Wikipedia by default is supposed to be USA usage. Their privileged Editors will change articles to be such.

[j.p.s]

It's anecdotal, but I've been noticing a lot of British spelling on wikipedia pages with US topics.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

It's anecdotal, but I've been noticing a lot of British spelling on wikipedia pages with US topics.

No doubt they'll get round to fixing it

[tubemonkey]

As an avid audiobook listener, this is not an issue for me; unless the narrator has an issue with it and starts pronouncing the words wrong. That's happened occasionally, but not enough to get worked up over.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No doubt they'll get round to fixing it

I would be disappointed if the foundation has a policy in either direction or if there are users with an agenda of gratuitously changing the spelling in either direction.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

As an avid audiobook listener, this is not an issue for me; unless the narrator has an issue with it and starts pronouncing the words wrong. That's happened occasionally, but not enough to get worked up over.

I've shed uled the Lef tenant to have a word (or 3) with you

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

I would be disappointed if the foundation has a policy in either direction or if there are users with an agenda of gratuitously changing the spelling in either direction.

I'm pretty sure there are users with such an agenda. Spelling fanatics aren't an especially rare breed.

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The other issue is that the UK needs to standardize.

Did no-one tell you? We Brits are multi-talented and quite tolerant - even when some representative of a johnny-come-lately English-speaking nation tells us we're not spelling 'humour' correctly. We can read many varieties of English. Which incarnation should we have standardised on? Middle English? Shakespeare's English? English found in 19th-century Classics? 1940's English? Spelling and punctuation have been evolving ever since the printed word became a Thing and I don't suppose it's going to stop.

On a less frivolous note - I don't have any particular preferences about m-dash (with no spaces) versus n-dash (with spaces) but if you're going to read your books full-justified I believe the latter gives a better result. The more spaces you have on each line the smoother the word-spacing will be.