British vs American spelling in books?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

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.

Which punctuation do you prefer? Why is it the UK cannot standardize? They cannot even standardize on metric and Imperial.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Which punctuation do you prefer? Why is it the UK cannot standardize? They cannot even standardize on metric and Imperial.

Which punctuation do you prefer?

• The double quotes for outer dialogue, then inner has to use single.
• An em-dash with no space for broken off dialog.
• Prefer commas or brackets to em-dash or en-dash for an aside, but if there are dashes, then en-dash spaced either side, though I feel from a logic point of view an en-dash or em-dash as an aside ought to have outer spaces and no inner space, like brackets, but no-one does that. I'd leave USA texts as is on punctuation.
• Single quotes for a word, phrase or title in quotes that isn't dialogue. I'd not bother trying to change this on 3rd party text.
• No full stops or colon on end of headings, but they can end with ! or ? if appropriate, though usually it's not.
• No added white space of empty lines, only CSS margins.
• Judicious occasional use of 'Oxford' comma if it helps. Often re-order text is better. I'd never change this on 3rd party ebooks
• Numbers and abbreviations are big topics. My rules don't apply to 3rd party books.

Why is it the UK cannot standardize?
Depends what you are considering. There is no-one in charge of English in UK as there is for French in France. Webster started USA on being prescriptive. UK and Ireland are not.
Good texts on UK punctuation are: 'Eat Shoots & Leaves' by Lynne Truss, 'Punctuation' by Larry Trask (was free download on his web site, published by Penguin).
I've maybe 10 other printed books. mostly UK Penguin, related to grammar or punctuation.
Some famous books were never good for dialogue and fiction but aimed at Journalism, reports and Civil Service. Even revises Strunk & White is now not great.
Newspapers have style guides, such a UK Guardian. The USA Guides such as AP and Chicago don't agree.
Our own Style Guide is a work in progress and aimed at Fiction we proof ediit, not 3rd party books I get.

They cannot even standardize on metric and Imperial
Ha! Kettle and pot! USA doesn't even have Imperial cups, pints, quarts and gallons! NASA lost a spacecraft by mixing up Imperial and Metric (so now are Metric only).
Officially they are metric. Except road speeds & distances. Perhaps vehicle fuel? I forget. Ireland is metric on those. The current * * * folk running UK wanted to abandon EU metric after Brexit. They had a consultation and no-one except Rees-Mogg and friends wanted to go back. So they proposed bringing back the defunct one pint wine bottle. No-one is going to make them. Not even British wine producers (yes they exist but often add imported grape juice).
I lived in UK for years. I'm beyond trying to understand England or Westminster. The three countries (GB) and Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom of Greai Britain and Northern Ireland. The Isle of Man and Channel Islands are not in the UK. Gibraltar, by treaty, can neither be in the UK or independent. Unlike USA, where you can join but can't leave, it's possible for N.I., Scotland or Wales (but not Cornwall) to leave the UK and it's supposed to be a 'partnership', but England plus the English that have settled in Wales basically decides things. N.I. and Scotland and Welsh Wales all voted against Brexit.
There is no written constitution.
The Church oF Ireland was never part of the Church of England, from Henry VIII to 1922, so unlike USA in 1776 where the Anglican church unilaterally left and became the US Episcopalian Church, the Church of Ireland was unaffected by 1922 independence. The UK Prime Minister approves C of E bishops and Archbishops, who sit in the House of Lords. The English Monarch is head of the Church of England.

And you find the fact that each UK publisher has their own rules and change them from time to time odd?

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't define definitive spellings but has always catalogued usage. Often grammar and punctuation taught in UK schools is not based on real usage, but is artificial, or obsolete, or completely wrong!

Anyway each US papers have their own rules.

[Quoth]

Oh, and another thought.

The UK has a society dedicated to the proper use of the apostrophe, but they also have a group that wants to abolish the apostrophe!

Here in Ireland a more major concern is major companies and government things (like Health Service) not accepting accented words or names (people or places), especially common Irish ones. The fada like on Caitríona or Méabh (multiple spellings). However there are plenty of Polish, French, Spanish and Germans etc.

[Martinoptic]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Which punctuation do you prefer?

Good texts on UK punctuation are: 'Eat Shoots & Leaves' by Lynne Truss, 'Punctuation' by Larry Trask (was free download on his web site, published by Penguin).

The University of Sussex have an online version of “Guide to Punctuation” by Larry Trask. He was a lecturer there I believe.

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Martinoptic

The University of Sussex have an online version of “Guide to Punctuation” by Larry Trask. He was a lecturer there I believe.

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/punctuation/

Yes, that's actually where he had a website. That book is a great free resource.