Subject: Speech marks
Author:
Posted on: 2015-08-04 08:21:00 UTC
Now that you mentioned it, I realize that I prefer double quotes even when writing British, probably because they don’t look like apostrophes. It makes the text appear much more clear and orderly to me.
HG
I'm not British, but I use British spelling for most things. I can't remember the American spellings for most words, either. I'm just curious if anyone else does this. Oh, and this ties in to any beta requests from me (May be one soon, I've almost recovered my primary hard drive) so that people will know why my stuff sounds American, but looks British.
Apart from signifying speech. I use American-style double quote marks there, and I'm not really sure why.
I just know the doubles as speech marks and the singles as quote marks, but I don't know where/why I picked up that quirk. It wasn't until reading a PPC mission that mentioned the difference that I realised I was doing something slightly odd.
- Irish
You had a question about double "speech marks" vs single 'quote marks' somewhere in the TOS beta, I think. It might be of interest to everyone, so I'll answer here.
The truth is, that's not actually a rule—in fact, the rule is to be consistent and only use different marks when you've got nested quotes, like if a character is quoting something out loud. (If you're wondering, the solution to an awkward situation of a quote butting up against dialogue is to rewrite the passage so that doesn't happen.)
I don't know where the tendency to use doubles for dialogue and singles for other material came from, though I'd love to find out. It's definitely non-standard. On the other hand, it seems to be more and more widely used, so for all I know it could become accepted. *shrugs*
~Neshomeh
Now that you mentioned it, I realize that I prefer double quotes even when writing British, probably because they don’t look like apostrophes. It makes the text appear much more clear and orderly to me.
HG
I’m neither British nor American. I learned British English at school, but later I read lots of American texts. So, when I don’t use a spell checker, I probably mix it and use just what I remember best. Also, I may not always be aware that a word is specifically British or specifically American.
But then I try to always use a spell checker, and my main fandoms are British, so I should really try to write British English. On the other hand, my spell checkers default settings are German and American, and setting it to British is a bit tedious. So I actually write mostly American English. Unless I take the time and can justify the extra afford, like when I beta read for Brits.
HG
My vocabulary is Ameri-tish since I use candy, truck, zipper, and movie on one hand (AmE)... but taxi, autumn, tap, and football on the other (BrE)
We use all of those other terms as frequently as the Brits do. Except Football. Because ours is better, we get the name. That's how it works, right?
WHO DAT! Go Saints!
(It feels weird being the only football fan here...)
"You know what people call Chicago-style pizza? Chicago-style pizza, deep-pan pizza. You know what the people call New York-style pizza? Pizza."
((Also, American football is a stultifying experience and features tackling that is totally unsafe, but the former at least may just be me. You teach your linebackers and so forth to lead with the head and then wonder why they all get sodding brain damage. America, everyone.))
You might be, however, the only rugby fan here! ;D
Time for war! :3
...use single quotes to denote quotes outside someone speaking, which is apparently British.
This is an 'example,' in case I didn't make myself clear. And that looks like it's not an example, but it is. I promise, guys.
But yeah, someone else just caught that in my writing. I have no clue how long I've been doing it for. It just looks better that way to my brain... >_
...use single quotes to denote quotes outside someone speaking, which is apparently British.
This is an 'example,' in case I didn't make myself clear. And that looks like it's not an example, but it is. I promise, guys.
But yeah, someone else just caught that in my writing. I have no clue how long I've been doing it for. It just looks better that way to my brain... >_
Then again, I am a rather bad speller in the first place., so, really, I don't use either one.
Except for gray and grey. depends on which side of the bed I got up on. even though I can only get up on the left side of the bed.
The first time I saw the word "grey" written out was on a crayon, which apparently used the British spelling. I learned the spelling based on that crayon, so now the "gray" form looks wrong to me.
Only, in my case it's the combined influence of Gandalf the Grey, Earl Grey tea, and also the crayons/colored pencils. Apparently all art is European.
I say we ditch the a spelling. Who needs it? All the cool greys use the e spelling. The warm greys and French greys, too. *ba dum tsch*
~Neshomeh
American literature is hard for me to read because half the text looks weird. That's why I probably don't read as much as most people here.
I only use American Spellings with really the exception of grey. I use gray/grey interchangeably.
I actually have to check myself while writing missions because I have a really ingrained instinct to use the British spellings (thanks to growing up reading the original versions of Harry Potter).
But considering I plan on moving to England someday, it probably isn't a bad thing...
I'm similarly inclined toward British spelling (in most cases) despite not being British.
Generally, though, this isn't something you need to announce; just note it when you offer your services as a beta or ask for one.