GoF: US v UK Double Negatives

[Joanne0012 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 29703

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Heather Moore" <heathernmoore at y...> wrote:

>ASE frowns on double negatives as bad form, interpreting the clauses as 
cancelling each other out. I believe that in Britain, this sort of double negative 
is a regarded as a legitimate way to emphasize a point.
> 
> Very possibly the earliest printing of GOF in America kept the original 
>phrasing, and an editor subsequently "fixed" that phrasing for later printings?  
>How does the sentence run in the British editions?

Sorry, my British paperback says (p. 618), "Time is short, and unless the few 
of us who know the truth stand united, there is no hope for any of us."  

So I think the double negative was an error, and they had to correct it by 
either dropping the "not" or changing "unless" to "if".