Brit-picking: vital or a waste of time?

[emmagrant01]

jedirita and I discussed this topic over lunch yesterday, and it pops up on LJ constantly. I've never given it much thought, honestly, because everyone who's ever called me for an Americanism has been extraordinarily nice about it. The culture in the HP fandom seems to be that writers should use British English whenever possible, and I'll admit that I've bought into that 100%. I always looked at it as a respect-for-canon issue.

Rita feels differently, though, as do a lot of other people. So I started thinking about it, and now I'm questioning my sudden zeal to make sure my HP fic is as Americanism-free as possible. Can I really accomplish that? And is it really a worthwhile goal, considering there are so many other more important things to work on as a writer?

I'll keep this brief because so many people have already said something about this at some point. I'm still forming my thoughts, and I won't bore you with anything half-assed, for once! ;-)

For now, I'll just point to this post by lykaios, and say. "Yeah. What she said."

Comments

[helens78]

Well, I can be picky about it, but not pedantically so, if that makes sense. I think it also depends on the characterization and style of the piece. I recently read a Sports Night fic where there were some phrasings that were off -- and it was a dialogue fic, so that really stood out (and Sports Night is very much about the snappy dialogue, so if it looks wrong, it really looks wrong). On the other hand, there are lots of LotRPS writers who write various American boys with different nationalities' syntax, and that seldom bothers me at all.