Fandom vibes check re: British English spelling?

As a Scot, Americanised spelling doesn’t bother me, but using words and phrases that aren’t really a thing here does. ‘Gotten’ is a particular pet peeve of mine, along with going to the ‘grocery/drug store’ and referencing brands and companies that don’t exist here. 😂

I honestly don’t care about spelling, but one of the things that takes me out of a story the most is when they drink herbal teas and/or where they have heated the water in the microwave. Everyone has an electric kettle, and tea is almost always black tea with milk (sometimes a slice of lemon) and sugar.

As a Canadian with English parents, I do miss the additional Us in favourite, neighbour, etc.

But I can also never remember which side of the pond uses s or z, or even which I'm supposed to use (lol). So I guess I'm not that picky.

I always remember grey/gray by thinking E=English, A=American.

I don’t mind the spelling, but as someone who enjoys certain kinds of fics, the different definitions of “pants” can be confusing

Spelling doesn't matter at all to me! The things that sometimes bother me are more to do with cultural differences (eg having Crowley be a fan of a celebrity chef who isn't famous here) or lack of basic research into geography. Spelling is basically optional haha

I write in American fandoms with British spellings. I've occasionally been called out on it, and just respond that which version of the language is used only matters in direct speech, and in direct speech it's not spelling that matters but word choice. Once they've thought about it people tend to agree with me, and when I've Britpicked for American writers I've always worked on the same principle.

It doesn't bother me at all, since I'm not a native speaker. In school I was taught a sort-of-authentic British English, but these days I use a rather unique (and horrible) mixture of pretty much every accent and spelling I've ever encountered, both in writing and speech. Who I am to judge?

Also, welcome to the fandom! :)

Canadian, kind of straddling between the 2:

If someone isn't using the BrE spelling, it catches my attention, but it's more the things, like pants or drug stores, that really jar me out of a fic.

Spelling never really bothers me as at the end of the day they're pronounced the same but swapping out wording does. It only would it it completely changes the pronunciation.

However swapping out British words for American words does bother me. ie (and these are just random examples, not GO fic examples): sidewalk for path, parking lot for carpark, pants for trousers, trunk for boot, apartment vs flat (however apartment is also used but an apartment isn't a flat lol), subway for underground, cab for taxi, chips for crisps, fries for chips (as fries are different to chips), flashlight for torch etc.

I feel if you're writing characters who speak in an English (British) way, then the wordings need to reference our wordings as like in Az/Cro's sense, they're already not human trying to fit in so if they're in London and someone heard them say, in very English accents, that they're going for a walk and say like "do you have a flashlight I can't see the sidewalk" then this sticks out hugely.

I was reading a fic once and I can't remember exactly what it was now but Az/Cro were having breakfast and the author made them to be eating an extremely American brand of cereal that whilst we might have it in the UK in our "American" sections of supermarkets, it is by far from something we eat for breakfast and it was a little jarring how different that individual chapter was from the remainder of the fic as no other chapter was like it lol

Oh and we don't brand name drop, and if we do it's generalised for even off-brand (ie. if a well known brand makes something, but there are also identical non-branded/store made copies of it, we still generally will just call it by the brand name as everyone knows what you're on about).

In British English it's usually down to the publisher's style guide. That'll be what the original editor of the book used.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you really want to, you can always ask Word/Libre Office to down check on UK English and that'll work quite well.

Don’t use Ain’t I think that’s a safe thing to tell you not to put in your fanfic.

As with the rest, I don't notice spelling as such but do notice when the wrong terms are used.

I mentioned I another thread yesterday - nobody signs a receipt in the UK - I'm in my thirties and can count on one hand the times I've had to sign while paying, and even that was well over a decade ago. Everything is chip and PIN, or contact less.

I do prefer British spellings and British words, American ones throw me out of it a bit.

as an American I get the opposite feeling in other fandoms 😂 what do you mean he was calling his mum and it was 30° Celsius in New York?

Spelling I don’t mind. Aside from aluminium, it’s mostly all pronounced the same.

Word choice annoys me and I’ve dropped fics over it. Bentley has a boot, not a trunk, and pants are underwear and should probably not be being removed in a fic unless it’s sexy times ahead. We don’t have blocks in cities unless you’re in Milton Keynes and then you’ve got bigger problems than fic terms.

I read a fic recently where a large bit of the plot was around A struggling with bills following an accident and it specifically mentioned a few times that it was bills for his surgeries… which just doesn’t exist here. That story could not have happened. Short of money because he wasn’t working and running up debt, sure, even to the point of losing a house but the hospital chasing for money is thankfully, impossible. I dropped it.

Not a spelling but a word.

I don't recall if it was used in GO, but the one British term that utterly stumped me while reading was "pram". I had no idea what a pram was.

I think Roald Dahl used it in Danny the Champion of the World but there was an illustration that helped me get that once. It was 25 years later when I read the original British version of a book written by she who will not be named that I was utterly stumped by what a pram was and had to find a Brit to explain it to me.

I don't recall if nanny Crowley uses a pram, it's just my most memorable example of having to full stop put down a book before I could fully picture what was going on in that scene.

I Britpick like nobody's. Full stop. Even to the point of spotting American plug points in "British" stately homes in movies and TV.

If rumors are true and s3 is in America, I think that might help with some of the fandom that believe that GO is a British thing and anything not written as British or not set in Britain isn't worth reading.

But yeah, getting the culture right is a must.

English Brit here and (no shade to you, you're keeping everyone above water til S3), it drives me round the fucking bend.

Not just spelling, there's loads of subtle phrases and exclamations that mark US vs UK out as separate, as NZ and Aus and Safa English would be too.

The reason I don't like it as a whole, is because it feels like an imposition/eradication of culture. We don't want to be American (you're lovely, but no), and I don't want to change how I speak, nor influence people to presume that's how we speak. We already have a voice and it does matter how things are said, and characterisation ends up off.

Most people get it right, but there's one particular artist I've blocked because I cannot stand to read it, it's so off/uncanny valley that it's upsetting.

But I am more than a little Neurospicy with a lean towards aural/oral sensitivities so that might be why?

English is my second language, and I find that American spelling doesn't necessarily break my immersion. American grammar or vocabulary, on the other hand, can snap me right out of it.

And I have to ask: Are diners at all a thing in the UK?

Me, a non-native speaker, who spent most formative years with an American teacher but the last 6 years at a job that works mostly with British companies: realizing what a mess their language is

my question back to you is would you find it overstepping if I mentioned in the comments if it was a particularly noticeable example? I've been pulled out of some incredibly good fics with things like "cell phone" or basically any sport reference and it's like... I want to tell you so you can edit so it doesn't ruin the vibe for the next reader but I think that is considered rude, but it only matters to me when the fic is good enough for me to be in a zone to be pulled out of

Nahh, spelling doesn't bother me.

I do find it funny when someone sets a fic in the UK but then everything about it is American.

Suing people, the whole 'you'll be hearing from my lawyer' thing...it's just not really a thing here. Fun fact: if you want to get insurance for your small business in the UK, it's like £10 a month and you can just register online. Unless you ship to the USA, in which case you have to call them and they add a shit tonne of money to the monthly charge because you are SO MUCH more likely to get sued and have to use the insurance.

Food...I read one fic where the author had clearly googled 'British food' but not the context, so the character ate a heavy wintery meal as a light breakfast.

University / College. What Americans call College, we call University. College is a different thing.

But stuff like spelling, trunk/boot, sidewalk/pavement, trashcan/bin etc. I don't really notice.

i can’t say i ever notice spelling, but like most others terms and cultural differences are very apparent. but i find it funny most of the time so it doesn’t bother me 😭 it’s just very clear someone who’s not from the uk wrote it and that’s fine lmao 

Any American spelling or pronunciation bothers me, but then I'm just very particular. It's a personal thing

It doesn't bother me. In fact, I think people are probably better off writing in their native tongue if they're not fully 'fluent' as it were. I've come across a number of fics where the writer is clearly not British but is trying to use British English, and I can only tell this because they over compensate in places in a way a British person never would, like using very old fashioned words that, while technically are British, have long since been replaced with the more common American usage

As an American, I do not bother to use British spelling, but I really don’t notice when I come across fans who use it either. I can’t imagine anybody really caring that much either way (and I would say that of British people writing in their dialect for an American fanbase) it seems really snobby to worry about something like that when it’s an international fanbase literally using the same language.

It does throw me off a little bit, yeah. It's not the end of the world, but it's nice when people at least try to make it authentic, assuming they know better.

I think as an Australian who uses British English (it’s our default) but who’s as most Aussies exposed to quite a bit of American culture, it doesn’t really come as jarring??

Spelling annoys me slightly, but I’ve read enough fanfics that I just look past it at this point; I will be absolutely annoyed at people using American spellings in day to day tho, like not adding the u or z instead of s. When reading tho I can look past it bc as long as its otherwise well written it does not matter much to me