A Call for Understanding Amongst International Writers ~ Support An Author Month
I was thumbing through novels last night, noting the differences in the way various authors, or publishing houses, format their books. It was hard not to notice the many ‘mistakes’ in these books. The question is, are they really mistakes? It depends on where you’re sitting.
There are profound differences in punctuation and layout styles between the British spelling and United States spelling countries: let alone the rest of the world. I know some fellow Australian writers, who have been savagely attacked for this in their book reviews. “Full of errors.” No, just written in Australian English which uses ‘our’ not ‘or’ and ‘s’ not ‘z.’
Great is the temptation to become a grammar or punctuation Nazi! I am finding myself, that reading books from the United States sometimes irritates me. My Aussie eyes see things they have been trained to edit out and it’s hard to move past them. I have read books which do contain outright errors. Ebooks seem to be littered with them and I find as many in books from traditional publishing houses, as I do from Independently published authors. Multiple spellings in word processor dictionaries allow these errors to go unnoticed, except by the most eagle eyed proofreaders. They seem to be on a permanent lunch break…
We need to be kind to each other, that is a fact, but do we also have to guard against lazy punctuation? I read through one of Terry Pratchett’s books last night. Had I handed in an assignment with that punctuation when I was working through my editing certificate, I would have failed. Had I used it when editing for a University I worked with, I would have had my butt handed to me and none too politely. Using dashes – instead of commas – is outright wrong: if that is your training. I have no problems with people writing dialogue to match the manner people speak in. And if the sentence starts with and or but, that’s fine, but some editors go nuts over that.
My spell checker and I fight frequently. I need to use double ‘L’ in some words, it won’t switch to Australian spelling and demands one ‘L.’ I honestly wonder, are we abbreviating everything for ease? I don’t know and the answer may be different for each person. I have used computers for years and years. I have seen the differences in the dictionaries they use and the standards are definitely morphing. The list of issues seems to grow. Do we hyphenate words that belong together such as easy-speak. Apple’s Page’s grammar checker says no, but the grammar checker here on WordPress says yes! Who do you believe?
You can let it all drive you crazy, or you can shrug it off and say, “that’s just the way the globe spins, folks!” I think that is the better option. I clearly remember being attacked by a memoir student who accused me of deliberately not using Australian research sources, favouring the Americans instead! She was firmly told I went to the authors with the best reference material, I didn’t give a fig where they were from and frankly, that attitude is racist. It still hurt me though. She had been particularly nasty in a public forum. Let’s not be like that. We need to support each other and show compassion. We all have our own personal style sheet in our heads. We all do things differently. As long as we’re moving forwards and improving our skills, there isn’t necessarily nothing wrong with that.
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Filed under: "Writing Lessons from the Writing Life" Tagged: author, books, grammar, Indie publishing, kindness, novel, punctuation, tolerance, writer, writing
