I wanted to mention an apparent disparity between U.K. and U.S. English that may have slipped under the radar, since I've never seen anyone mention it.
Here in the States, item A is "different from" item B. A number of U.K. and European writers (and at least one Australian) here often say one is "different to" the other.
Not sure why it took me so many years to notice that, but I typed "different to" (in the quotes) into the Search function here just now and confirmed it, at least on the first nine pages. To clarify, I'm only describing that one usage; if "to" is being used in an infinitive -- "It's different to see you in dresses now" -- naturally it reads the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
This doesn't apply to the word "difference", e.g., "it makes no difference to me". It does seem to apply to "differently": Americans treat that word "differently from" the way at least some European authors do.
Just an advisory for U.S. writers trying to include U.K. dialogue in their stories, and vice versa.
Eric
I think the distribution is different than you suppose
http://www.dictionary.com/e/different-from-or-different-than/
:)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Different Than...
...is a different can of worms; I didn't even mention it. But FWIW the first three pages of search data for "different than" don't include seem to include any U.K. writers, as the dictionary.com article suggests. It's "different to" that one doesn't find in U.S. stories and blogs on the site.
I was careful -- though not careful enough -- NOT to say that "different from" is unknown overseas. If that had been the case, I'd probably have run into this earlier. It was the other side of things that I was trying to highlight. One American speaking to another is unlikely to use "different to". (As the article notes: in the UK, different to is a common alternative [to different from] that is seldom used in the US.)
Eric
Not so
This blog was specifically to raise the awareness of those terrible American writers who are trying to write tales that seem British. Now I usually stick with the dialect of my youth with a few forays into other areas of Americana. But it is nice to realize that when I see different to in a story I'm probably reading something by a person from England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia or Canada, with a minor possibility that I'm reading a story from India.
Or in other words, no we're not the grammar police. But if you want to run your story by a proofreader, by all means, contact someone whose shingle has been hung here.
UK (or Queen's) English
If you read phrases like that the author is most certainly European. I, as a German girl, learned it in a student exchange with the UK in the sixties, but believe me, I had to live in the UK for years to catch up on all the stuff, that is typically English but definitively NOT Queen's English, LOL.
As to Australian and then again New Zealand English they have recognizable differences again. My spell check has all of those versions and quite a bit more. The Indian people I know speak a weird mix with a lot of US-American influences in it as well as some rather peculiar Indian things like bamboozled, for example, it all gets more and more complicated.
As for storytelling: if you want a story to be set in England use UK-English please to the best of your ability. One would be hard put to believe someone to be a Texan in Texas if he greeted a female customer with: "What'd you like, Luv?" You catch my drift? Of course if you plan your story for an "uneducated" American audience only be my guest, but don't complain, if that strikes European readers as out of place and they have the right to express that.
Monique S
Ignore them
and celebrate being different. Just do your best as we all do and be proud of it.
Vive le Difference (or should that be 'la'?) :) :) :)
Samantha
Vive l....
may be your difference is f2m transgender? (giggles).
Hugs,
Monique.
Monique S
Where the Heck...
...did anybody talk about "requirements", "unofficial" or otherwise? I certainly didn't. Nor did I say anywhere that stories on the site needed to "meet my standards". In any case, I'm not an admin, here or elsewhere.
I do think most stories can benefit from being "run through others", as you put it, where that's practical, but I don't consider it an "unofficial" requirement; plenty of good stories don't do that. (And mostly what proofers find are innocuous things like spelling a character's name two different ways in the same story.)
And as you've seen, in effect everyone's stories are being run through others once they're posted. What you want to do about complaints at that point -- as at any other point -- remains entirely up to you.
Some authors and editors here want to get this sort of thing right, so I'm offering the information; my guess, since I wasn't aware of this particular one until recently, is that others might not be aware of it and would therefore appreciate the observation -- or correct me if I'm wrong, or if I haven't explained it clearly enough.
Eric
That’s how I saw your post
There is definitely hypersensitivity going on here.
I think
The sensitivity was not on Eric's part. He said he just noticed this difference. Now as a reader, I've seen it, but one of the places I saw it first was commercial fiction, so assumed it was an acceptable if not standard for American usage. Until Eric pointed out that it was in fact a difference that was common usage among UK authors I hadn't drawn the connection. Also, if someone had sent me a piece of fiction with it in it to proofread I would probably have marked it as not standard but put in a note that it was possibly acceptable in certain regions. Now, thanks to Eric's effort to educate me I'm more aware and can look at where the story is set and where the author is from and determine that is how they learned to write the language.
It isn't easy to write
stories that are set in a very different environment from the one you know.
I've dared to set a number of stories in the USA(or mostly there) although I'm based in the UK.
Luckily I've visited the USA many times and actually lived there for almost two years but even so it was so easy to fall into UK mode when I should be in USA mode. It isn't easy especially at first (Funny Business) but like most things, a bit of practice, and you get better.
It might be that I've found a middle of the road voice for the stories. I don't know but I am more concerned with the story telling than being grammatically or dialogue correct. Perhaps this makes readers not complain? I don't know but as I said in response to elfindumb's blog post,
Vive la Difference and TBH, who cares if I get a few bits of verbage wrong? Only the grammar politzei and I have learned to ignore most of them.
Samantha