just how different? UK = Canada

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180724

> > Potioncat:
> > I should have said I understand why, not that I agree with...
> >
> > But, tell me, in England, when you read an American book, is the
> > spelling American style? Are the books provided by the same 
publisher
> > in England as in America? I've never really understood why HP 
has three
> > publishers.


> montims:
> it is not necessarily the same publisher, but yes, the spelling and
> terminology are just as in the original, whether written for 
adults or
> children.

Magpie:
Are you basing that on knowing it for a fact or just what seems to 
be true in your experience? Because I don't think you're correct. 
There are books in America that keep the British spelling just as 
there are books in England that keep the American spelling, but I 
don't believe it's a case of just always being done in the US and 
never the other way around.

I remember in particular Susan Cooper talking about fights with a 
particularly strict copy editor working on the British editions of 
her Dark is Rising series and she definitely seemed to be picking 
through the books for Americanisms that might have needed to be 
changed for Great Britain. The books take place in Britain, of 
course, so it's not like she was trying to have American characters 
use British slang (in fact what she was doing was accusing Cooper of 
having them use American slang when they weren't), but still they 
seemed to be putting out the British books the standard words for 
things and standard spelling for that market--it's not an odd thing 
to do. If you're publishing a book for your own market you would 
naturally use the same guides as usual. By which I don't mean 
changing the dialogue to sound British when the people are American, 
but using spelling and punctuation you use.

Actually, now I'm remembering a book that was going to be published 
by the place where I worked years ago--it was a British book and we 
were going to do the American edition. Presumably they did say they 
were going to use the spelling the US copyeditors used, and may have 
said they might change a word if it were confusing. I'm not sure 
what the deal was, but this author wanted to do it--himself. I still 
laugh over the ms he sent in--a thousand times more changes than the 
American editors would ever have even considered making, much of it 
changing expressions that were either perfectly understandable to 
Americans or actually the way Americans would say it into bizarre 
turns of phrase that I guess sounded American to him. Which was an 
odd choice given the book was set in England.

-m