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British Invasion


I’m mainly speaking to American, and sometimes Canadian, experience here, when I bring up the phrase “British invasion.” Am I talking about war, or about the world of international music? Or perhaps fashion?


"British Invasion" Colored Pencil on Canvas Board by E. A. Hanninen, 2017

No. I’m referring to spelling in English.

English-speaking-and-writing countries have their own standards for grammar, punctuation, idiomatic phrases, and, of course, spelling. For example, whole cultures take a stand on whether to use 1 or 2 Ls in particular words, such as traveling/travelling and counselling/counseling. Grade-school children are drilled on vocabulary lists with specific word spellings, especially tailored to the region they reside in. Book and newspaper publishers maintain style guides that include which spelling variants are going to be used before any manuscript will see the light of print.

That’s the way it is.

Some literary editors even get pissed off if writers send them manuscripts containing the “wrong” regional spelling and grammar. Mainly, they’re annoyed that if they choose to work with those writers, they have to spend extra time wading through all the pages noting the variants that have to be changed either by the author, a copyeditor, or proofreader.

This problem can be avoided if writers do their homework before submitting to foreign publishers. Submitting in the UK? Use British spelling and grammar. Canada? Australia? Find out the publisher’s preferences for grammar and spelling; you can very often find this information on the publisher’s website in the guidelines or stylesheet sections. If you can’t easily find regional style information, you should assume the foreign publisher will want to use their local standards, and you should attempt to do your own best copyediting with this in mind, before sending out your work. Also, ask yourself why you want to submit to a publisher outside your region. Is it worth the extra efforts to revise for that region?

But hey — even though it’s professionally considerate to tailor your manuscripts to the regional styles of the publishers you’re submitting to, I think it’s rather excusable if you make a mistake when attempting to do so, or if you are, perhaps, even actually confused about what constitutes American/Canadian/British/Australian English.

If you are not only a writer, but a devouring, ravenous reader (which I hope you are!), you have probably been reading books, magazines, and/or poetry since you first learned to read, and if that’s so, you have likely read classics and translations from many countries around the world. Amongst the library shelves you found not only American, but European, Asian, and other worldwide authors, as well. And at a young age, you were more concerned with reading the stories or truths contained on the pages, than you were with whom, exactly, was the publisher of the book in your hands. (That came later, I know.)

Come now, just a taste of British English influences: Arthur Conan Doyle, C. S. Lewis, William Golding, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, The Bronte sisters, Tolkien, Agatha Christie, A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll . . . see what I mean?

And think — the more we read, the better we read. The faster we read. The less self-conscious we become in the process. Absorbent, assimilating minds.

What?, hey! Yes, assimilating. From childhood on, I repeat, haven’t most of us readers read a ton of books by British authors? Or British-English-using authors from other countries? Haven’t we read certain of these British-flavored words so many times that we have adopted rather a number of them into our own vocabularies? Admit it — do you love “grey” more than “gray”? “Amidst” more than “amid”? I do.

American editors and publishers do sometimes consent to spelling options; there are words in the American dictionary that are “allowed” multiple, acceptable spellings. If they’re not commonly accepted, though, dear writer, you should quietly bow to the authority of your publisher and follow its style guide.

Still, what I’m saying here is that I think American editors and publishers, as well as those of other regional persuasions, on the whole, should at least understand why American writers, in particular, might be a bit in a snarl over the right spelling of certain words. It isn’t particularly lack of education that causes some of us to stumble, but rather, an early indulgence in and love of British literature that has created an unconscious adoption of foreign, literary mannerism.

I’m also saying that writers, in general, should give themselves a bit of a break — it’s perfectly understandable that you may not always be sure of how to spell a word or where to put a comma or period (inside or outside the quotation?), or even of whether to use “which” or “that.” If you read English written by international writers, you have been inundated, most likely subconsciously, with contradicting grammar, punctuation, and spelling styles. And face it, that invasion’s been grand, hasn’t it? Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Doris Lessing…

It’s a British invasion I don’t much mind at all.

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