Thanks guys.
Some great answers and food for thought. I think I am going to use the English spelling when writing fantasy though. I have just browsed through a manuscript of a sequel I am currently writing and it 'feels' better with the English words.

 

Americans, after all, are the gits of the English speaking world.

You do realize we have common ancestors and are cousins, right? Likewise, our languages are cousins.

 

Yes, not no. No, not yes. Yes,yes. No, no. Who really cares?
Time for the Canadians to stop quibbling over the fine points.
Truce, WH and Andrew! We can all do as we like.

 

No, WH, -ize is the spelling favoured by the Oxford University Press. It is also the spelling used by female writers such as Virginia Woolf, Margaret Forster and Elizabeth Jane Howard.
It's true that British newspapers, such as the Daily Mail and the Sun, use the -ise spelling.
The choice is yours! (Just teasing!)

Not no, yes. "In-house style" means their style for books edited and published by them. Papers in journals published by Oxford are not made to conform to Oxford's in-house style. There is no specification regarding preferred spelling in submission guidelines in any Oxford journal I've seen and you'll find -ise and
-ize in academic journals published by Oxford. By the way, Oxford isn't exactly the only publisher of academic books and articles in the UK.

 

I live in America so I spell American. And hope to get THAT right.

 

Interestingly, I was reading the 'look inside' sample of The Casual Vacancy on the Amazon.co.uk site and found American spellings of some words ("realized" "emphasized" "visualized") in some places and British spellings of others ("labourer" "paralysed"). She also uses both "tarmac" (more common as a UK description of a type of paving material) and "asphalt" (more common as a US description of a type of paving material) within a few chapters of each other.

Weird.

Just to confuse the issue, British English has the Oxford and Cambridge varieties. British schools generally follow Cambridge (for example "ise" instead of "ize") whereas universities often follow Oxford ""ize"). "Ize is often incorrectly thought to to an Americanism. It's actually etymologically more sound and closer to the Greek root. "Ise" is most likely from the French.

I was brought up using "ise" but I've switched to "ize" as it's more common internationally. Of course, there are more differences between US and British English than just the spelling (including some elements of punctuation).

I'm currently rendering my Nameless Dwarf books into US spelling, partly because the majority of my readers are American, partly because I've grown used to American spelling, and for one other reason ...

 

Yu no wut, skru it. I am going tu spell wurds like thae actually sownd. Problem solved! Wie bother koming thru yor werk?

Thiss iz a lot harder to rite than I thot it wud be.

 

I'd keep the original spelling, grammar,  and word usage of the author.  If the book is set in Ireland the writing should be Irish English. 

I loathe Americanized spelling in books.  It shames me that some of my fellow countrymen think this should be done.  Americans, after all, are the gits of the English speaking world.

 

The norm with paper book publishers US to UK, for US settings, is to leave the American spellings, but to alter the punctuation to Brit style.

 

Although I've read hundreds of books by American authors, I'm not qualified to write in American English. Sure, I can do American spellings (and if I can't, Word can), but there will be at least hundreds of terms, phrases, idioms, call them what you will, that will be peculiar to the States that I won't know.

Exactly. And it goes both ways. The fact that I know a few British terms won't stop me from failing to be aware of terms I don't know. British English is not my native language, so to speak, and I'm bound to mess up (or cock it up ) if I try to write in it.

I recently read a crime thriller that was set in the UK and was purportedly written in British English, but was obviously written by an American. I could tell within a few pages because, for example, the author kept mentioning the autopsy (we call them 'post mortems' over here) and there were numerous other terms that we don't use in everyday language - every time I came across one, I'd be jolted out of the story.

I would never, ever try to write a professional story set in the UK without running it past several native British readers. It's just too easy to make errors. Even if an American watches a lot of British television and reads British books, s/he's still going to make mistakes. And the reverse is probably true as well.

 

This topic comes up fairly frequently; if you do a search you'll see a recent thread on it, I think.

Do a search on "Krista Canadian Spelling Too Bad People can suck it up" and you'll find my thoughts

 

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I can't see what there is to debate. If you're self-publishing (and if you're not, it's probably not your problem) and from Britain or America or Canada or Australia or wherever, it seems obvious to me that you should write in your own 'language'.

Although I've read hundreds of books by American authors, I'm not qualified to write in American English. Sure, I can do American spellings (and if I can't, Word can), but there will be at least hundreds of terms, phrases, idioms, call them what you will, that will be peculiar to the States that I won't know.

I recently read a crime thriller that was set in the UK and was purportedly written in British English, but was obviously written by an American. I could tell within a few pages because, for example, the author kept mentioning the autopsy (we call them 'post mortems' over here) and there were numerous other terms that we don't use in everyday language - every time I came across one, I'd be jolted out of the story. The author bio was very vague, referring to the author currently living in London, and was clearly trying to disguise his/her nationality.

But why? I don't have a problem with an American author setting a novel in Britain and still using 'American English'. I'd much prefer that to being jolted by Americanisms coming from a supposedly British author. And I think readers of whatever nationality are quite capable of enjoying a book set in the USA but written in 'British English', as long as they know from the outset that the author is British. Far better that than coming across phrases that make you wonder about the author's nationality. In my view, anything in a novel that, while you're reading, draws attention to the author isn't good.

 

No, WH, -ize is the spelling favoured by the Oxford University Press. It is also the spelling used by female writers such as Virginia Woolf, Margaret Forster and Elizabeth Jane Howard.
It's true that British newspapers, such as the Daily Mail and the Sun, use the -ise spelling.
The choice is yours! (Just teasing!)

 

"Realize" and "realise" are both correct in British English. Academic articles from Britain often have the "ize" spelling.
I just checked my Oxford English Dictionary and both spellings are listed.

1. Academic articles published in the UK aren't all written by Brits. The journals don't edit them out because the spellings are still Standard English.

2. Dictionaries list alternate spellings. The common one in the region for which the dictionary was published is listed first.

 

Ms Rowling thinks otherwise.

Apparently so. Or her lazy publisher

Ellen, that's interesting - and to be expected to some degree, I guess. It just seemed very odd looking at a UK version of it with both UK and US spellings jumbled in together, like some weird hybrid.

 

Ms Rowling thinks otherwise.

The US editions of the Harry Potter books had some of the Britspeak edited out (I had to order the UK editions because I was curious). That might be the case here. Or it might not be. I don't know *shrugs*.

 

Ms Rowling thinks otherwise.

 

"Realize" and "realise" are both correct in British English. Academic articles from Britain often have the "ize" spelling.
I just checked my Oxford English Dictionary and both spellings are listed.

It's a British work of literary fiction, not an academic article. I assure you, you'll be very hard-pressed to find "realize" used anywhere in the UK (with the exception of, as alluded to above, more academic materials - the "z" spelling is actually an old English spelling, having been largely replaced by the "s" variant in modern times). The OED may list both, but that point is purely academic. Both are correct spellings, but only "realise" is in common usage in the UK.

 

"Realize" and "realise" are both correct in British English. Academic articles from Britain often have the "ize" spelling.
I just checked my Oxford English Dictionary and both spellings are listed.

 

Also, there's slightly more to it than correcting spelling. There are large quantities of idioms that are used on one side of the Atlantic and not the other. (Nappies are diapers over here, prams are strollers, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.) If you decide to try to make your book look American, then I would suggest having an American go over it to get rid of any overtly British idioms. Otherwise it may confuse readers worse than if you left the spelling alone.

I would tend to agree with what JH said-- a book set in England should sound British, and a book set in America should sound American. At the least, you don't want your American characters wittering about adverts on the telly, or whingeing that the food in a pub is absolute rubbish.

THIS!

I once critiqued a manuscript set in the US written by an Australian, and to this day, I still giggle about "the rowdy pack of footballers." I had to explain that if she's going to write a book set in the US with US characters, then it wasn't enough to simply use American spelling.

 

Interestingly, I was reading the 'look inside' sample of The Casual Vacancy on the Amazon.co.uk site and found American spellings of some words ("realized" "emphasized" "visualized") in some places and British spellings of others ("labourer" "paralysed"). She also uses both "tarmac" (more common as a UK description of a type of paving material) and "asphalt" (more common as a US description of a type of paving material) within a few chapters of each other.

Weird.

 

I'm English but use American spelling (go figure). Why? Because I find most of the people who come to my website are from America, and I feel my overall audience will be of the American kind.

However, I do have two English characters in my book, and in their dialogue I use English spelling. Nothing like making things complicated

Matthew

 

Pick one, preferably the variety that you naturally speak/write, stick to it and be consistent.

This, only without the "preferably".

 

Pick one, preferably the variety that you naturally speak/write, stick to it and be consistent.

 

Although some of my books are set in Victorian England, I use USA spelling because:

I'm from the US.

Reviewers who don't know UK spelling would hit me for "errors" if I didn't.