One of the things I
often come across in the course of my work is having to Americanise (or
anglicise) text. I’ve also been called on to create “universal” text at times,
too, which can be something of a challenge (you try writing a 128-page
non-fiction book for children on almost any subject without mentioning the word
“colour” and you’ll see what I mean).
Now, I wouldn’t claim
to be able to pass for an American anywhere other than in print (my accent is
just a bit too Radio 4), but I think I have developed a bit of a sixth sense
for divining the finer differences between the two Englishes on quite a few
different topics. And while I will never learn to favour favor, I have come to
love certain things about US English and genuinely enjoy the gentle pleasures
of unravelling (or should that be raveling?) a piece of text for a whole
different audience.
Some things are
obvious. Everyone – editor or not – knows that colour, honour and so on lose
their “u” on the transatlantic flight. But it took many years of getting it
wrong and an American editor to point it out for me to realise that glamour is the same wherever you are in the world. (I never have claimed to know too
much about glamour in any context. That’s why I work from home.)
Likewise, if it’s got
an “ise” ending, just make it “ize” instead, right? Well, usually, yes. Just
don’t get carried away, especially if you’re venturing into ‘Find and replace’
territory (more of which a little later). Did you ever see an American
improvize or advertize anything?
I’m not going to say
too much about commas, because everyone (every publisher, editor and
schoolchild) has their own, probably equally valid, opinions about how commas
work, whatever side of the Atlantic they’re on. Suffice to say that Americans
(usually – not always) like the serial comma more than we do. Though I gather
the serial comma is also big in Oxford.
Americans prefer
double quotes, just as we, often, prefer single (though I quite like double; we
learnt it that way at school). And yes, they do position them differently with
regard to punctuation – always outside the comma or full stop (though not
outside the colon or semicolon). “Like this,” “this,” “this,” or “this” (note
the serial comma, too). It might look odd to a Brit at first, but it kind of
grows on you.
As with every other
aspect of editing and proofreading, I imagine that Americanisation is a prime
example, to a layperson, of a task that could be accomplished perfectly
adequately by a machine. There’s a “Find and replace” function in Word, or
InDesign, isn’t there? In response to which I would cite my dismal experience,
many years ago, of doing a global find and replace in a book about cake
decorating. I substituted the word “pan” for “tin” and felt quite pleased about
how much time I had saved with a single click, not to mention my mastery of
American baking terminology. Only to read the whole thing through later on
(before it went to print, thankfully) and feel a little puzzled by the
malicious insertion of such made-up words as “continupang”, “interestpang” and
“sitpang”. That took a little while to reverse.
Of course there are
the unspaced em dashes where we would used spaced en dashes. But this is really
venturing into the realms of high geekery in the eyes of most people, who view
any kind of dash longer than a humble hyphen as impossibly esoteric and most definitely
optional. (Back in the real world, even the days of the hyphen seem numbered.)
Happily, there are
many resources on the Internet to help you when you’re Americanising or
anglicising, whether the subject is knitting (do you cast off or bind off?),
cookery (should you measure by volume or weight, and what the heck is
cilantro?), jewellery/jewelry making (just how do you describe the thickness of
wire?) or even just trying to get an idiomatic phrase right (does an event
impact on the schedule, or simply impact
it?).
There will always, as
with any other publishing endeavour, be things to trip you up. Things you might
not have thought of, unique to the particular project or type of project you’re
working on. For instance, if you’re working on anything that is both
alphabetical and illustrated (a children’s dictionary, say), you need to remember
that you’re probably not going to be able to move the pictures for the new
edition – only revise the text. So don’t illustrate anything that starts with a
different letter in US English than it does in British English. Think of
curtains/drapes, tadpole/polliwog (this whole post was really about giving me
the chance to use the delicious word “polliwog”) or tap/faucet, for instance.
Finally, I don’t ever
like to feel too purist about or defensive of British English. We can learn a lot about
all sorts of things from the variations of our language, and not just at the
level of simple curiosity. For instance, a very simple example is that I never
really “got” time signatures in music, which I encounter regularly in my other
life as a very amateur musician, until I learnt the American terminology for
notes of different lengths. How much more straightforward and graphic is a
“quarter note” than a “crotchet”, or a “sixteenth note” than a “semiquaver”
when you’re trying to work out how many beats there are in a bar (or measure)?
Thank you, US English.