British vs American spelling in books?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by 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.

You do make a rather good point on spelling based on the book in question and where it takes place.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

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.

So why is it that some books published in the UK use US punctuation? That makes things inconsistent in the UK (IMHO).

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Really, that's why? If so the publishers for US are certifiable. That's a truly bizarre logic.

It's the explanation I've always heard, and I believe Rowling herself has said in the years since that she regrets allowing the publisher to change the title.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I love reminding them that the word "soccer" was coined in the UK.

Very many words common in the USA are simply ones that have fallen out of use in England. There are also still words in Ireland and Northern Ireland now out of use in England, from Norman and Elizabethan times. Scotland also has extra words and about 3 regions.

Maybe Irish and Scottish readers have less difficulty with some US texts than English readers (place rather than language).

I have a friend who is only into Rugby. That well known kind is actually Rugby Union Football. The other kind is Rugby League Football, which in Yorkshire is called football. The objection to calling football, soccer, is a particular class of football fan that in UK and Ireland that makes Sky TV rich.

Rugby here in Munster is as big, or maybe bigger in some places, than the Gaelic football, which I played once and don't understand. To me it seems a bit like rugby with a round ball. The other big one here is Hurling (Camogie if girls play it). It's been described as ice-hockey played on grass. Many Northern Ireland Catholic Girls Schools play camogie* and hockey and strike terror into the girls hockey teams from the other schools**.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
That mentions Australian Rules Football, which is similar to Gaelic.

So to me soccer makes more sense as there are five well known games with football in the name apart from soccer. But it's true if you say football (outside Yorkshire) in UK & Ireland people assume soccer or even just Sky enriching Premier League. Rupert Murdock was Australian and bought US citizenship so as to own US media. He's practically destroyed football (soccer).

The legendary Cú Chulainn means Culain's Hound, because as Setanta he killed the actual guard dog with a slitter (the ball in Hurling, which is a bit like a cricket ball, very hard!) playing hurling (maybe 2,500 years ago). However the current Gaelic sports are mostly 19th C. The original Gaelic football might have used a dried brain, in a bag, off a dead hero, c.f. Welsh legend of Bran and his head later buried in London.

[* Lacrosse started in North America and is now in posh UK schools. No connection to hockey and certainly not camogie.]

[** According to an ex-hockey player I know well]

Edit:
I forgot Shinty, which is like Hurling, and even has a version played on ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinty

[Quoth]

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).

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.

[jackm8]

Originally Posted by issybird

The narrator says "compton" instead of "cumpton"; the latter is correct. And Chocorua has the stress on the second syllable, not on the first and third.

I'm afraid it would be missed completely by me. I was just wondering where it was mentioned.

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

It's the explanation I've always heard, and I believe Rowling herself has said in the years since that she regrets allowing the publisher to change the title.

She was immediately opposed to it, but she was just overruled by her American publishers.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

The simple reality is, of course, that standardised orthography is simply a conspiracy foised on our ancestors by the lazy yobs at Caxton-era printeries who couldn't be bothered setting type for both eggs AND eyren

Also early English printing killed the Þ, used often as Th at the start of a word. So Ye Shoppe is actually The Shop. The Þ þ Ð and ð are still used in Icelandic.

Also originally there was no spacing for a paragraph start or between paragraphs. They used the Pilcrow ¶, but due to influence of earlier hand printing and illumination they often left a space to print it later, maybe in another colour, but often there wasn't time, or to save money they didn't so the indented paragraph was invented. A chapter often started with a drop cap, due to the influence of illumination. They need to be as dead as the Pilcrow (¶) as they slow reading comprehension. Rare since Victorian times.

The Dinkus is for a more significant paragraph break that is not a section break (§) anslo called silcrow. The Dinkus was also used occasionally till the 20th C. to indicate omitted content, where the ellipsis … is now used. It's still sometimes used to indicate censored content.

* * *

The Pilcrow ¶ and Section break § are now hardly seen outside of legal documents. Some languages may have used § rather than ¶ to indicate paragraphs.
Then there is the dagger (†) for footnotes or to indicate a member is dead, but oddly it's not derived from the Christian cross, to mark death or extinction. It's rare now but I see it on some German language forums to indicate the poster is dead.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jackm8

She was immediately opposed to it, but she was just overruled by her American publishers.

I also read she's not J.K. Rowling, but Joanne Rowling (no K) and that was Bloomsbury's idea, despite loads of successful 20th C. authors using obviously female first names and read by boys (Enid Blyton). And others even in USA read by adult men (Anne McCaffery, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin)
Publishers are weird. Poor Carolyn Janice Cherry persuaded to be C. J. Cherryh (Though unlike Rowling's 'K' she really has an initial J) and Alice Mary Norton was Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston (but I don't if that was her idea or not).
It's true that often men writing Romance/Chiclit or similar use female pen names.

What a tangled web

I was in a mad S/H goods shop (Charity shop) and the new manager decided to sort all the books by, um, perceived sex of the author based on cover name (separate shelving). That lasted nearly 3 months and all the staff thought it mad.

Of course some famous writers are entirely made up pen names: Leslie Charteris (he & daughter give different origin stories), Cordwainer Smith and John Le Carré (he was actually still a spy when he published 3rd novel, 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold '; Ian Fleming was a desk jockey and his bother Peter, a reporter, may have been a spy. Peter is a better writer too!).

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by issybird

The narrator says "compton" instead of "cumpton"; the latter is correct.

Are you sure? I've only ever heard "Compton". "Cumpton" sounds to me like an American corruption of a British name.

The Oxford Learners Dictionary agrees with me.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jbjb

Are you sure? I've only ever heard "Compton". "Cumpton" sounds to me like an American corruption of a British name.

The Oxford Learners Dictionary agrees with me.

I'm sure; I read the pronunciation in a British book about Britlit between the wars. I don't doubt it's specific to him, or the point wouldn't have been made.

And.... this site agrees with me.

https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/Compton_Mackenzie

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by issybird

I'm sure; I read the pronunciation in a British book about Britlit between the wars. I don't doubt it's specific to him, or the point wouldn't have been made.

And.... this site agrees with me.

https://www.wikiwand.com/simple/Compton_Mackenzie

We'll have to agree to disagree over that one . He's of Scottish background, and I've lived most of my life in Scotland and never heard the "Cumpton" pronunciation.

I'd also choose an Oxford dictionary's pronunciation of a British name over that from some random US-based website! Again, I suspect that "Cumpton" may be an American corruption - maybe correct in the US, but not in the UK, and not how he'd have pronounced it himself.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by jbjb

We'll have to agree to disagree over that one . He's of Scottish background, and I've lived most of my life in Scotland and never heard the "Cumpton" pronunciation.

I'd also choose an Oxford dictionary's pronunciation of a British name over that from some random US-based website! Again, I suspect that "Cumpton" may be an American corruption - maybe correct in the US, but not in the UK, and not how he'd have pronounced it himself.

"Cumpton" is not an American pronunciation. And you missed the part where I said I read the pronunciation in a British book. As well as the inference that the point was made because it's an aberrant pronunciation.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jbjb

We'll have to agree to disagree over that one . He's of Scottish background, and I've lived most of my life in Scotland and never heard the "Cumpton" .

Actually he 'adopted' Scotland* and is from Durham. Compton was a family stage surname started by his grandfather and is more common as an English surname. Though less common than Crompton.

However, while it may be 'cumpton', we here always assumed it was 'compton' (as in com ports or competition or communication). Parts of England do pronounce come as 'cum'.

As he's dead since 1972, unless there is a recording we can't be sure.

[* Very seriously!]

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

As he's dead since 1972, unless there is a recording we can't be sure.

Why does everyone keep ignoring the part about the pronunciation being mentioned in a British book precisely BECAUSE it's an unusual pronunciation? I see enough evidence to be certain that his pronunciation of his own name is fairly well documented. No recording necessary.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Why does everyone keep ignoring the part about the pronunciation being mentioned in a British book precisely BECAUSE it's an unusual pronunciation? I see enough evidence to be certain that his pronunciation of his own name is fairly well documented. No recording necessary.

Yes, that might seem true. If you trust most British books.

He didn't speak like a Scotsman, so unsurprising that actual Scottish people would think it odd. I did write that I know parts of England do pronounce com- as cum-, so while surprised, I'd not argue that 'Cumpton' is wrong. I was disagreeing with jbjb's rejection of it, because Compton Mackenzie wasn't actually Scottish. He 'adopted' Scotland and Compton was a stage name adopted by his English Grandfather (born Mackenzie).

Hands up those who knew "Scottie" in Star Trek was Canadian and both his parents came from Northern Ireland?

I have a bunch of Mackenzie's books and saw the Film version of Whisky Galore a long time ago. You'd think he was Scottish from the books.