5 ms·

It applies to English too, if you are using anything but US English. I find it wearing and tedious. I used to love reading US books - with different spelling,

It applies to English too, if you are using anything but US English. I find it wearing and tedious. I used to love reading US books - with different spelling, idioms, habits, social expectations, and the odd phrase or word I'd never come across. Then revert to British books, read the odd German translation etc. I'd read a Nordic crime novel because it's not set in a quiet English village, Chicago or London, and things are done differently. Apparently that's not permitted by publishers any more, unless you're as lucrative as JK Rowling or T Pratchett. Many British recent novels, and just about all recent sci-fi are written in American. Not just spelling, but a book set in 1930s London, with a London character who we've just been told lived in the East End all their life, will talk about the sidewalk, the trunk and hood, and such. All judges will use gavels - regardless that in the UK, only an auctioneer uses a gavel, no court possesses one. This sort of thing gets especially silly with things like the Laundry Files - it's parodying Britain, its culture and its systems, yet talking in "Yank". I've read a few different Nordic crime novels where not only are they written in American, they are culturally appropriated to be set in a virtual USA, called Sweden (or Norway, etc...). Suddenly the Nordic countries have district attourneys, US police hierarchies, US court systems and such. This is particularly grating. I don't understand why. It ruins far more books than it helps. Above all, I don't believe it would put off US buyers to read of a few places doing things strangely or talking funny.

chrisseaton 7y ago
> All judges will use gavels - regardless that in the UK, only an auctioneer uses a gavel, no court possesses one. Not true - for example Inner London Crown Court.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Really? https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-system/court-traditions/ https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-sys... Edit: LOL. According to "Inappropriate Gavels" @ Twitter, they do indeed, but they're not used at all by the judge. They're the one court where clerks use a gavel to signal the judge's arrival. Still, I stand (partially) corrected. :)
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Yes, really. I didn’t say a judge used them - you said no court possesses one, and they do.
    - avn2109 7y ago
      This is the best kind of internet pedantry and I appreciate that you took the time to inform us of this.
jacques_chester 7y ago
It sometimes depends on the printing. Books printed for the US market will use hood, trunk etc. Books printed for the UK and Australian markets will use bonnet, boot etc. If you buy online there's a good chance you'll get the US printing because it's usually the cheapest.
mrob 7y ago
I don't think British characters speaking American English is any stranger than characters in a fantasy setting speaking a real-world language. In both cases I assume it's translated for the convenience of the reader. I'm a native British English speaker, but American English is more common so I prefer reading it because that's what I'm accustomed to.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  It's the homogenisation I regret as it's so limiting. PG Wodehouse and F Scott Fitzgerald probably wouldn't have lasted half as well had the writing been sanitised to some mid Atlantic generic English and humour first. Those archaic and now slightly odd idioms mattered in setting the scene and time. Douglas Adams, always highly reluctant to meet deadlines, might never have got beyond the radio series had his editor required an Americanisation pass. The books would have been far weaker for it. Puzo (The Godfather) would be ruined rendered into British. Which is not to say I object to a Brit character using Americanisms in their English, we all do that, and vice versa. I just like characters and things to stay believable in a book's particular time and context, which increasingly they seem not to. In making them overly (US or world English) generic I find more that somehow feel out of place in their alleged setting.
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    I highly recommend if you're looking for diversity and the avoidance of americanization, I would recommend looking beyond the UK settings and into fiction inspired by or taking place in other parts of the world. Speculative fiction has had an explosion of culturally diverse and distint cultural nods lately- The Daevabad Trilogy by Chakraborty for example, or Lagoon by Okorafor, or the Dreamblood Duology by Jemisin, or The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. In my opinion it isn't that books aren't increasingly becoming more american. Books are increasingly globally set, from where I'm reading. (Of course, this may not be the case in non-speculative fiction sphere.)
indentit 7y ago
It drives me crazy when I read fiction books which use Fahrenheit (and sometimes don't even specify units) as I don't understand that measurement or many other imperial units at all. One would think in this day and age that authors could use some semantic markup and one's e-reader could use the reader's preferences to format the book for easier understanding/comprehension
TheJammyOne 7y ago
The Laundry Files don't sound Yank at all. They sound exactly like someone who might write for (or comment on) The Register, to the point that I ended up googling to see if Charles Stross had anything to do with the BOFH. It's very close version of a cynical British tech geek. The books focusing on his wife are more American, but then she IS American, so...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  The early ones certainly aren't, they're just about pitch perfect. Somewhere mid way, probably around The Annihilation Score, they become so and it starts to feel off, in part because the perfect pitch has become off key. That's entirely ignoring Labyrinth Index centred on Mhari, as it's the weakest book of the series, for its own reasons. Merchant Princes, set somewhat in the US, gets the pitch of place and character, and keeps it, much more consistently.
  - TheJammyOne 7y ago
    The Annihilation Score is a pretty good skewering of modern bureaucracy; we've borrowed a lot of terminology from the Americans and imported a lot of their corporate thinking, so it makes sense that the tone shifts. And again, that book is a Mo book, and she's American.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Not saying there is any problem with an American sounding American in any book. The problem is specifically with the other, non-American characters and their change in tone sounding unreal in the context of a Britain that has adopted many of those US empty corporate cliches, along with a few of our own. Like I already said, I got no problem with Brits using Americanisms - we all do that. Without going away to reskim it for quotes, which I'm not going to do, I think we have to agree to differ. :p

chrisseaton 7y ago

> All judges will use gavels - regardless that in the UK, only an auctioneer uses a gavel, no court possesses one. Not true - for example Inner London Crown Court.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Really? https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-system/court-traditions/ https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/the-justice-sys... Edit: LOL. According to "Inappropriate Gavels" @ Twitter, they do indeed, but they're not used at all by the judge. They're the one court where clerks use a gavel to signal the judge's arrival. Still, I stand (partially) corrected. :)
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Yes, really. I didn’t say a judge used them - you said no court possesses one, and they do.
  - avn2109 7y ago
    This is the best kind of internet pedantry and I appreciate that you took the time to inform us of this.

jacques_chester 7y ago

It sometimes depends on the printing. Books printed for the US market will use hood, trunk etc. Books printed for the UK and Australian markets will use bonnet, boot etc. If you buy online there's a good chance you'll get the US printing because it's usually the cheapest.

mrob 7y ago

I don't think British characters speaking American English is any stranger than characters in a fantasy setting speaking a real-world language. In both cases I assume it's translated for the convenience of the reader. I'm a native British English speaker, but American English is more common so I prefer reading it because that's what I'm accustomed to.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
It's the homogenisation I regret as it's so limiting. PG Wodehouse and F Scott Fitzgerald probably wouldn't have lasted half as well had the writing been sanitised to some mid Atlantic generic English and humour first. Those archaic and now slightly odd idioms mattered in setting the scene and time. Douglas Adams, always highly reluctant to meet deadlines, might never have got beyond the radio series had his editor required an Americanisation pass. The books would have been far weaker for it. Puzo (The Godfather) would be ruined rendered into British. Which is not to say I object to a Brit character using Americanisms in their English, we all do that, and vice versa. I just like characters and things to stay believable in a book's particular time and context, which increasingly they seem not to. In making them overly (US or world English) generic I find more that somehow feel out of place in their alleged setting.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  I highly recommend if you're looking for diversity and the avoidance of americanization, I would recommend looking beyond the UK settings and into fiction inspired by or taking place in other parts of the world. Speculative fiction has had an explosion of culturally diverse and distint cultural nods lately- The Daevabad Trilogy by Chakraborty for example, or Lagoon by Okorafor, or the Dreamblood Duology by Jemisin, or The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. In my opinion it isn't that books aren't increasingly becoming more american. Books are increasingly globally set, from where I'm reading. (Of course, this may not be the case in non-speculative fiction sphere.)

indentit 7y ago

It drives me crazy when I read fiction books which use Fahrenheit (and sometimes don't even specify units) as I don't understand that measurement or many other imperial units at all. One would think in this day and age that authors could use some semantic markup and one's e-reader could use the reader's preferences to format the book for easier understanding/comprehension

TheJammyOne 7y ago

The Laundry Files don't sound Yank at all. They sound exactly like someone who might write for (or comment on) The Register, to the point that I ended up googling to see if Charles Stross had anything to do with the BOFH. It's very close version of a cynical British tech geek. The books focusing on his wife are more American, but then she IS American, so...

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The early ones certainly aren't, they're just about pitch perfect. Somewhere mid way, probably around The Annihilation Score, they become so and it starts to feel off, in part because the perfect pitch has become off key. That's entirely ignoring Labyrinth Index centred on Mhari, as it's the weakest book of the series, for its own reasons. Merchant Princes, set somewhat in the US, gets the pitch of place and character, and keeps it, much more consistently.
- TheJammyOne 7y ago
  The Annihilation Score is a pretty good skewering of modern bureaucracy; we've borrowed a lot of terminology from the Americans and imported a lot of their corporate thinking, so it makes sense that the tone shifts. And again, that book is a Mo book, and she's American.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Not saying there is any problem with an American sounding American in any book. The problem is specifically with the other, non-American characters and their change in tone sounding unreal in the context of a Britain that has adopted many of those US empty corporate cliches, along with a few of our own. Like I already said, I got no problem with Brits using Americanisms - we all do that. Without going away to reskim it for quotes, which I'm not going to do, I think we have to agree to differ. :p