Something that has just occurred

[hazyjayne]

QUESTION: If you are writing fanfic for a US television/book/film show, should you use US spelling in the fic

Comments

[flavius_m]

Er, somebody said just a little while ago;
"IF YOU SEE ME ONLINE BEFORE 1900BST TELL ME TO GO BACK TO WORK.
"

so GO BACK TO WORK:)

[hazyjayne]

YES YES I KNOW. Going back now. I just had to get that out while it was in my head.... >_<

[flavius_m]

:)

[d_floorlandmine]

I was going to say that, but I see that it's been handled ... [grin]

[wordplay]

I don't know if there is a standard, but I have deep roots in the Harry Potter fandom and yes, I usually used British spelling in those stories, mostly because there was a handful of Brits who would lose their shit at people who didn't - I'm pretty sure it was a cultural imperialism thing and they were frustrated to have a British thing that was a big fannish property with our sub-standard, colonial spelling all up in there, fouling up the joint and Americanizing it up. Whatever. It wasn't a hard thing to do. There are a fair number of British authors who write in Glee and there are always British spellings in there and I usually just notice and carry on. It's a much greyer area than slang and dialogue, obviously.

Anyway, that is the very long story of why I still spell the word "grey". I blame Draco's eyes. :-P

[whenidance]

ahahah grey is the one I can't budge on either and I'm pretty Americanized.

[wordplay]

Right? I mean, you know, I can live without extra 'u's wandering around and taking extra keystrokes (Americans win at twitter! unless we're talking about being in THE hospital. Still. I'm planting my flag and calling it.) and I like my -izes, but it just LOOKS better with an 'e'.

Mostly I pity the Canadians.

[whenidance]

I've heard people bitch about it, but I don't care honestly. Now if the characters are using British slang in a US TV show or vice versa - that just seems out of character to me, but spellings shouldn't matter IMO.

[cookiedough]

I absolutely, absolutely believe in culture-picking. I mean, spelling (honor vs honour) is kind if a little more blurry, but I do tend to write my Glee stuff in US spelling as well as US terminology. But I speak 3 versions of English fluently - British/American/Australian.

[secretshipper]

I really don't mind either set of spelling (Brit here) when reading fandom.

Although I do remember a particulary amusing event in the LOTR fandom when all the people who used UK spelling were told they were disqualified from an award thing because of "spelling mistakes". Others found it less amusing.