h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a mid-Atlantic English. Some spellings conform consistently to British usage, some to U.S. usage.

Personally, I'd prefer to just continue using British spellings to maintain consistency *across the Guide*.


But, I've derailed this enough. The decision has been taken already. There's no point in me flogging it now.

Well I'm going to keep on. Why bang on about 300 million Americans being confused suddenly? They seem to have done okay for the past 13 years Why suddenly are some entries going to be confusing and some not? What about all the old entries written in America, about America, by Americans?

Why single out one target audience? If people really are confused about having to use English on an English site, then surely there are plenty of American sites to use? It's going to make us look ridiculous is some of the entries have a different sort of spelling.

As for discssion going on for a long time, it seems to be going on in a random corner of the site among a very few people, barely 3 pages of threads, I didn't bother to count contributors, 3 people credited on the page, and a link that might possibly help, but it's to Google docs which I can't view on my laptop so can't join in the discussion, and even if I could, a search wouldn't have brought it up as it's not on h2g2!

Okay, I will do one more:

I just re-read this and it sort of made me :

'To ask an American author, writing about a subject that is entirely American, to use what is in fact a totally alien form of spelling makes nonsense of language.'

But, to ask a Canadian author, writing about a subject that is entirely Canadian, to use what is in fact a totally alien form of spelling *doesn't* make nonsense of language?

Sauce for the goose, I would say.

But, whatever. I've been tending to cut back on work here, apart from that flurry of *purely Canadian' entries a little while before the move. This double standard will certainly provide little encouragement for me to do much more.

and, I went to A81601184 and I'm afraid I couldn't find any discussion of this question. I admit, I didn't do a search of every link on the page, but there didn't seem to be any obvious discussion.

Perhaps it's in that locked filing cabinet . . .

I know lots of people with English not as a first language who learnt to speak and spell English in America, and are still perfectly capable of using English when in England. Yet Americans are native English speakers and are confused that we use a different spelling?

I have no idea why this decision has been made! It appears to be that maybe h2g2 is now rather lazy.

Wouldn't it be fairly easy for anyone who wants to contribute to set their browser's/word processor's spell checker to 'UK English'. I started doing that years ago for when I was working on Entries, mainly to take a load off the sub-eds.

But, again, the decision's been taken.

In a cellar.

In a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.

My for what its worth. I think the EG should remain UK English full stop. It'll be less confusing for all inc sub-eds. The whole EG to date has been done that way without any issues so why change now? It'll mean more work not less, and in order to make sense someone will have to make changes to any existing entries or we'll just look like a bunch of amateurs frankly.

I wonder if I was the one who let this cat out of the bag?

When I was putting together the collection of entries for The Book, I included this UG entry: A3871523

I found it impossible to Anglicise the language in any way; Deidzoeb's voice is too strong for that.

That made me question what we do to peoples' voices here on h2g2, and my feeling is that we should not force writers to adopt an alien voice in that way.

Entries should be coherent; the points they make should be well argued. And they should be in "good" English. Yes, there IS a line that is crossed when localisation spills over into dialect, and another when dialect spills over into poor English; and those lines are as sharp as fog.

Now, "should" is the ideal, and there are practicalities here, as the discussion between Anhaga, Gnomon and Lanza shows. But if we are to attract writers, we cannot half-strangle their voices, simple as that.

This conversation makes me realise I owe Anhaga a belated apology; I did not apply my rule consistently in The Book and give you the chance to re-Canadianise the entry of yours which I included. I am sorry about that.

Ben

That wasn't an Edited Guide article though was it? I thought this was about the EG itself. The AWW, The Post etc are a different kettle of fish surely? They're the parts of the guide for expressing all manner of writing.

You are right, it's an Underguide entry, but fwiw, I think my point stands.

Years ago I was reading a copy of "The Big Sleep" so old it was green and had the penguin on the right on its cover: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01299/Penguin_evolution_1299290c.jpg

In that, Chandler mentioned a theatre. It grated on my badly, but it took me a while to realise it was the UK English spelling that sat so badly in such an American book.





B

But that's the Under Guide! Aren't we talking about the Edited Guide?

And

I had no desire to re-Canadianize my *Edited* Entry (although it would have been nice to know how to get a copy of the book)

As I said before, in the real publishing world, publishers set consistent standards for everything, regardless of where the author lives. My first academic article was published in Chicago: the editors mucked the spelling about to conform with U.S. usage. Others have been published in various European and Canadian journals and the editors have mucked about with them as well.

For goodness, sake, the first Harry Potter book was *retitled* for the U.S. readership.

In my opinion, the Edited Guide should have a standard format for spelling, etc. and it should only be departed from for the very specific purposes of an individual piece, not out of deference to 300 million potential readers who, by the way, were deemed to be too sensitive? ignorant? what? for the term 'Philosopher's Stone'.

s


I'm seriously going to stop now.

>> it would have been nice to know how to get a copy of the book

There were only a dozen copies printed, Anhaga. I am still working on getting it published "properly".

I should say that my opinions are no more valid than any other researcher, and certainly carry less weight than the Editorial volunteers. As the old adage says, "The Editor's Decision is Final". And I am not even a Scout or a Sub-editor, let alone a Guide Editor.

I'd have stayed out of this discussion if I'd not got a relevant anecdote. All I am doing here is recounting the thought processes I went through earlier this year while we were a bunch of researchers bidding for the site.

>>I couldn't find any discussion of this question

I don't believe the Guide Editors discussed this in public, Anhaga.

>>Why bang on about 300 million Americans being confused suddenly?

I didn't bang on about it. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

>Probably not as much confusion as the British English spellings cause to 300 million potential American readers< Gnomon

Do you really think yanks are that thick?

I've yet to meet a British person with even the poorest education being unable to work out the meaning of an American English spelling.

It's part of the fun of being in the global village of the internet. And even when confusion endures that can add to creativity.

Many years ago when I visited Philadelphia I asked for 20 Malborough...the woman utterly shocked...and asked did I really want 20 packs of cigarettes...we started laughing when I explained..

Jesus this site is done for if people are going to get so excercised by this sht.

We need people excited and enthused...not bloody worrying about this crp.

No, I don't think yanks are thick. But I'm reliably informed that many of them don't understand certain phrases in British English. I'm exposed to British English and American English every day, so I have a reasonable understanding of both, although neither of them are my language. But most Americans never hear any British English at all.

My experience tallies with Gnomon on this one. I've worked directly (sitting-side-by-side in an office, directly, and on-daily-phone-calls directly) with Americans on and off since 2000. Their exposure to British "culture" is far less than our exposure to theirs. As a result they tend to be confused by our language far more often than we are by theirs.

B

Gnomon's

When I visited they were always telling me how strange and fun my British English was. They liked it.

Plus when I was part of a Texan Lesbian site they *really* loved it.

But hey..I come at things from funny angles.

The Americans love my Irish English too. But I've never been part of a Texan Lesbian group.