Would you adapt the spelling in your short story for a submission to an American publication? My gut feeling is that it's a little contrived, yet it should be tailored to their audience.
Would you adapt the spelling in your short story for a submission to an American publication? My gut feeling is that it's a little contrived, yet it should be tailored to their audience.
I wrote "I give top marks to Paul Jauregui's" before I noticed the "More" button. (This is my first day on this Q/A board.) Equal top marks for Joy Dramargon. Her "Shall I be mum?" comment is spot on. To an American this would mean "Should I keep quiet?"
Another famous example is "She was PISSED!" In this transatlantic age, we can't always be sure what is meant. SOME U.S. writers do write "She was PISSED OFF!"
(Jimmy Hollis i Dickson had American parents, but was schooled - for all but 1 year in elementary school and 1 year in high school - under the British system. [His double surname form is stolen from the Catalans, "i" meaning "and".] - CV snippet.)
Good advice on here. I give top marks to Paul Jauregui's. If you have a spelling/grammar correction function for both British and U.S. English in your word processor×, you can write the story in UK English, make a copy, convert the copy into US English, and all the words like "colour" will show up underlined in red. But it WON'T show you that you should use "What?" instead of "Pardon?"
An American reader might forgive you for writing in UK English. Some of them have even read Kingsley Amis. But the pedantic ones might not forgive you for getting the American "accent" wrong.
× I've got [only] 2 laptops, NEITHER of which has word-check for any kind of English. (The keyboard on the one I use normally [e.g. now] is also wacky, so that I can't even find the asterisk, the ? key results in + on-screen, the ' key in -, etc.) EVERY time that I start a new document [on either laptop], Word underlines in red every word that isn't acceptable Spanish. And no, presetting "UK English" as default language just doesn't work.
And you thought that you had problems...
If you adapt your writing, you'll probably need to be consistent. Keep in mind, as others have pointed out, that it's not just spelling, it's grammar too, and some expressions that are completely different. In British English, it's a fringe. In American English, they are called bangs!
Just one example...
Good luck.