US/UK editions: Does anyone really want spelling changes?

[ezraeqonem]

But they do serve a purpose. First, most people don't like it when words are spelled "wrong". For me, seeing "color" written as "colour" is distracting in the same way as a typo even though I know the reason for it. Second, sometimes it's just plain confusing -- all of the words on peterbound's list have the potential to make a reader misinterpret a scene.

I have to agree. The other day I was reading the British edition of A Clockwork Orange and the nadsat slang didn’t throw me off, but every time I read the word “colour” I found it jarring. I think that for American readers who haven’t had massive amounts of exposure to British spellings, words like “colour,” “practise,” and “metre” do initially register as typos. Obviously it only takes about half a second to remember that it’s just the British spelling, but still. On the flip-side, I have never been distracted by seeing American spellings (spellings, mind you, not vocabulary) in a British book. They are so second-nature that it doesn't even occur to me.

[Yersinia]

There is a standard form of Dutch and most writers in the Netherlands and Flanders adhere to it nowadays. There are no 'colour/color' shenanigans here. Some words are used more up north and others are used more down south, but no one really bats an eyelid when they come across such words. In written form at least, most people I have met find the differences quaint, but not annoying.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was aware that there were some differences in word choice and preferred order but didn't know of any concrete examples, and I almost never read books in Dutch.

The other day I was reading the British edition of A Clockwork Orange and the nadsat slang didn’t throw me off, but every time I read the word “colour” I found it jarring. I think that for American readers who haven’t had massive amounts of exposure to British spellings, words like “colour,” “practise,” and “metre” do initially register as typos. Obviously it only takes about half a second to remember that it’s just the British spelling, but still. On the flip-side, I have never been distracted by seeing American spellings (spellings, mind you, not vocabulary) in a British book. They are so second-nature that it doesn't even occur to me.

Even though I'm firmly in the "author's version" camp, I can relate to this as well. The Other can be jarring, even when you know on an intellectual level that it's perfectly correct. Perhaps we've diverged so far that a lot of people really do have a need for different versions.

[Altherion]

In my way of thinking, the whole selection of words of a book are clearly intentional and thus should not be altered.

So, if "nothing is lost" in the spelling of certain words, why change them at all? Why not leave them like the author meant them to be?

Because their effect is not what the author meant it to be. Dickens certainly did not mean for the reader to pause at the word "coloured" and think "Why is this spelled wrong? Oh, right, the British spell 'color' with a 'u'", but that's what a lot of 21st century American readers will do. Altering the spelling preserves the original flow of the text and almost certainly results in a reading experience closer to what the author intended.

If it helps, you can think of it as a kind of translation. In the case of color vs. colour or center vs. centre, the translation is perfect since you're providing the reader with the precise word the author had in mind. In the case of boot vs. trunk and the like, it's not necessarily perfect, but still better than nothing.

[Larry.]

I usually don't mind much, as I change from dialect to dialect when I'm reading national literatures in English and Spanish, but on those rare occasions where I have to import the UK edition of a book written by an American writer, the changes are more noticeable than usual. I just finished reading Rachel Pollack's The Child Eater and it is set in the US, although to date it is only available in the UK. For example, the UK spelling for pediatric on a sign was very startling, to say the least. Also there might have been a change in mental imagery when it came to Pollack's frequent references to "red and gray squirrels." American red squirrels look very different from Eurasian ones (which do not live at all in North America in the wild) and seeing "red and gray" mentioned several times made me wonder if the names had been changed to those of two squirrel species now in the UK or if Pollack had the American red squirrel (or even the orangish fox squirrel) in mind instead of the Eurasian one.

And no, I didn't post this just to discuss a book full of squirrels, although it certainly was a convenient recent example!

[farseer2]

However, would anything be lost if "coloured" was changed to "colored" for American readers? I don't think so.

"Color" for "colour" is a particularly harmless change, but I still prefer to see how an author writes, what spelling and punctuation they use and what vocabulary. I don't want some faceless employee deciding how my favorite author's words should be changed before I'm allowed to see them.

(exaggeration) What's next, changing Cormac McCarthy's punctuation because it's just wrong? (/exaggeration)