The only difference I'm aware of is that single speech marks are acceptable in the UK? I don't use them, and the only books I've seen with them in were published in the 1950s. I understood the -- outside the speech marks was correct across the board, but it's something I use maybe once a book so I'm not that bothered. I think now that most books are pretty much international, thanks to the ebook market, any remaining differences won't be long lived.
Grammar-wise that may be true. For spelling, though, we have some that are borrowed from U.S. English, others from British and still others that come from French (cheque, for instance, which may be the same in British; I don't know).
Oh. I guess I missed the 'S' and assumed you were talking about formatting and punctuation as in the em-dashes in the OP... this thread has gone on a bit of a tangent. Well, just like my Londoner doesn't think about sidewalks, she doesn't realize things or use color. With the verbs do you mean like learnt/learned? I used -ed, which I believe is acceptable in the UK and preferred in the US. Anyway, my agent didn't change any of that.
learned vs. learnt is the one that catches me most often. There are others, but I can't think of them off-hand.
I don't think it's a big deal at the submission stage as long as you're consistent. But your editor may end up wanting things changed to match house style.
Yeah, that's my approach. I'll catch as many actual errors as is humanly possible and let the editor worry about style choices.
My understanding is that SPAG for everything is for the target market, narrative word choice is for the target market, dialogue word choice and direct thoughts or bits that are practically direct thought are likely to be how the character would speak, and in first person or very close third person that might include the narrative. So if I were writing about an American character, in the UK, writing for a UK audience, third person limited but not too terribly close, I imagine: Jane wandered the halls, increasingly frustrated. Elevator, elevator, where was the elevator? Seeing a man in a green-coloured jumper with the hotel logo, she asked, "Elevator?" He nodded agreeably. "The lifts are down at the end of the hall." "Right. Lifts. Elevator equals lift. Yeah. I'll get it." He called after her, "You'll have learnt it before the end of your holiday, don't worry!" Yeah, whatever. She sighed in relief as the lifts came into view. I probably have some unintentional Americanisms in there. (For example, I wasn't sure if I should have put "Yeah, whatever" in purple or not.)
I usually write in pretty close third, so I'd probably use character voice for most narrative word choice. Might depend, though, on my confidence that Americans would know what I was talking about--I can't remember details but I know I've changed things in the past for books set in Canada but sold to a US market when my US editors couldn't figure out what I was talking about.
I'd be really confused by a character who thought about elevators along with coloured jumpers. I mean I wouldn't get precious about it if an editor felt strongly, but I WOULD think it was an illogical change. ...but like Bay, I write in close third. Maybe this makes sense for a more distant/omni POV... though as a reader, I'd still find it odd.
I suspect that this is an error in my writing of the example, rather than the principle. I was struggling with making it close enough to support "elevator" in the un-quoted un-italicized near-direct thought, but distant enough to support the jumper, and I think I failed. (I also think that "jumper" is a word that UK writers would just have to avoid in any context for an American audience; the jumper would probably have to become a jacket. Or pullover, if that has a common meaning on both sides.) Now, "coloured" I'm confident about, because that's just naked spelling. "Learnt", on the other hand, is an actual different word, IMO, from "learned", so in close third-person narrative, it would have been iffy. I burble.
Learnt/learned are the same word, different spellings, unless you use learned as in, "He was a learned man."
Well, spelled differently, pronounced differently... I agree that the meaning is the same, but...? ETA: "trunk" and "boot" have the same meaning, but are spelled differently and pronounced differently. They're not really the same word...
Returning to add that one website states that in the US, "learnt" is seen as colloquial. So perhaps the same word as learned in the UK, but not in the US.
Edit: I understand your post now I've read back. Bay added the ETA after I responded, so I was only responding to the first half of her post. In the context of this discussion trunk and boot aren't interchangeable: one tells you the character is probably USian (or maybe Canadian or other places that say trunk) and the other tells you the character is probably from the UK (or maybe others that say boot). The same isn't true of learned and learnt, as both are acceptable and used by USians and UKians. So it doesn't matter a jot which one you use unless you're using learned in its alternative meaning.
I don't think learnt is used by Americans, at least not generally. It may not be technically incorrect, but it's not standard.
Yep. I know it as a word, but I've never known anyone in the US to say or use it. And doesn't it sound different? If the same UK speaker said both, would they be indistinguishable in sound? If I say them, the consonant at the end of "learnt" sounds like the beginning of "top", while the consonant at the end of "learned" sounds like the beginning of "dog".
Drifting back: I see burnt and burned as two different words, though I think both are used in the US. They're redundant, but still not the same word.
