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

The Guide Editors have announced a change to h2g2’s style guide, English Usage in Approved Entries. British-English spelling will remain the accepted standard for most Entries submitted to PeerReview; however, “in instances where an American author is writing on an American subject, then use of American spelling for that Entry is both sensible and acceptable.”

This modification to h2g2’s style guide has been approved by the Board of Not Panicking Ltd and applies to entries submitted to Peer Review from this point forward. The revision to EditedGuide-Style won’t affect Entries that are already part of the Edited Guide.


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NaJoPoMo, the h2g2 Nation’s Journal Posting Month (A87709062), ended at the stroke of midnight November 30th. Thirty days of outstanding journaling from a range of different researchers. We congratulate them for their efforts and for the reading enjoyment they have provided us with.

Researchers who posted to their journal each day during the month of November were eligible to win a prize by random number selection. Congratulations to hellboundforjoy (U525540) who won a limited edition book containing some of the best of the h2g2 Guide.

However, there is no time to relax as Create (U14992038) has a whole new set of challenges for December. Share your festive recipes (A87721626) with the Guide; compose a story for the long, dark evenings of approaching winter (A87724894); add an ornament (A87725622) to the h2g2 tree; turn a gift to a loved one or even a famous figure into poetry (A87725613); and record your weird and wonderful holiday experiences in your journal (A87725631).

Any questions, suggestions and offers of help to Solnushka (U138596) or [email protected].

>“in instances where an American author is writing on an American subject, then use of American spelling for that Entry is both sensible and acceptable.” <

Does this ruling only apply to American authors then?

I'm British English...and am thinking of doing some sort of entry to do with my visits to the East coast, some years ago?

As a British subject writing about Yankland, what would you suggest as most appropriate?

The voice of the author would be most appropriate.

Write it whatever way you want.

I'll probably use Canadian English then. anhaga has really got me into that now.

Brilliant, I look forward to reading it.

I don't. Canadian English is so dull....

If you want to cause extra work for your Peer Reviewers, Sub-editors and Editors, you can try writing in a type of English which you are not familiar with.

Or you could just help h2g2 and keep to the Writing Guidelines.

Next time I write about the Isle of Wight, can I use Isle of Wight English, as listed in WH Long's 1886 Dictionary of Isle of Wight Dialect? (See: http://www.round-the-island.co.uk/isle_of_wight_dialect/dialect.pdf)

<BB<

Why ask for permission? If you're going to write something, just *write* it.

It's almost as if people want to be told they can't do something, so they can feel aggrieved.

Excellent news

I hope we'll have a nice hootoo christmas tree at the end of the month so please help decorating everyone!

Entry ID: A41950046 (Help Page) English Usage in Approved Entries

1. There are 11 instances of 'h2g2' in the Entry, and 13 instances of 'H2G2'

2. The word 'reuse' is not a good example. 'Re-employ' would be better (correct spellings according to Oxford).

3.

For the umpteenth time........ both those words are perfectly spelt. Only people who insist on saying 'an hotel' (sorry, anhaga ) would wish to 'excommunicate' them - particularly odd for such a Create-ive site.

Referenced Guide Entries need to be checked for typos and other errors, and reported to Editorial Feedback http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A388334 - Want to help clean up our act? There's in it, and a fair amount of kudos to .

Doubters, please see this: http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/aoranhistoric

Don't forget that we're releasing a new smiley every day until Christmas Eve over at A87723967!

I'm going to mug up on US English at some point and do an entry on it in British English as I'm a British English person.

I love all these Englishes.

gud job I only spake Yorkshire lingo then eh!

One of the oddest disparaties I've found while writing here is the difference of opinion on the use of 'single quotes' and "double quotes" to denote conversation, and a speaker's quote of a separate dialog.

To wit:
I've grown up learning to use double quotes for the overall spoken text of a character, and to use a single quote to denote dialog the character is quoting inside his own dialog.

"You know," said Thompson, "I've never been able to quote verbatim that whole 'Four-score and seven years ago' speech by Lincoln."

From what I've seen on H2G2, the British rendering is thus:

'You know,' said Thompson, 'I've never been able to quote verbatim that whole "Four-score and seven years ago" speech by Lincoln.'

No matter which way you slice this one, there will inevitably be problems with the combination of 'single quotes' and nearby contraction's or possessive's in the con-text.

[Please note the odd placement of the " ' " above.]

Apparently it's a browser issue. Remember the apostrophe bug that struck us all when Barlesque was introduced? I think it has to do with that.

I must have missed the "...apostrophe bug...when Barlesque was introduced..." because I've only been on HooToo since November 2002. I suppose it wreaked havoc with a lot of the Guide Entries. And here I thought it was a 'particularly British convention' of how to punctuate properly.

So, yous folks across da Pond, ya use da single and double quotes the same way as we do? Go figure!

B4ihavetocompletelyrewrite10yearsofhistorywithHooToo2justifymymisunderstanding

The apostrophe bug only caused problems in plain text. All edited guide entries are in guide ml, so apostrophes are fine in barlesque.