Ripper's tail and paw :-)

[Carol]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> Could anyone with the British edition of PoA please check if in Ch.2 Harry remembers to have once trodden on Ripper's paw or on his tail :-)? In my British edition it's the paw, but in my American edition it's the tail. Maybe it's different in some other year edition? 
> 
> I have Scholastic first edition (1999), but Bloomsbury 2004 edition, so I'm not sure if it's the difference between two British editions or between British and American editions, and I would like to find out. The Lexicon doesn't have it on their list of differences, so I can't figure out what it is. The paw seems more logical to me, because a bulldog's tail is really short :-). All this is on p.19 Br.ed. and p.18 Am.ed. Thank you :-)!
> 
> 
> zanooda
>
Carol responds:
 I don't have the British edition, but that sounds to me like the kind of correction that a dog-loving copyeditor might make and query (or just query). Probably, JKR wrote "tail" and the British copyeditor, picturing a bulldog's short tail, changed it (or queried it) and JKR went along with the change. Meanwhile, the American copyeditor, either not thinking about the matter or picturing fat Ripper lying on his stomach boggling up food when Harry accidentally stepped on his tail, left the wording as originally written.

Just my guess, but, if one version ends up different from the other, it has to be the editing. Both publishers start out with the same manuscript.

Carol, who would have left "tail" as is without a second thought