Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Publishing in the UK questions...

This is topic Publishing in the UK questions... in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Some of you know that I'm a Yank living in the UK... I'm slightly confused about submitting works to UK publishers, tho'.

In the UK, dialogue is often written with inverted commas or single quote marks, with punctuation outside the marks such as:

'Hey! Give me back my pint before I throw you down the "apples and pears" you good for nothing goit'!

You see, the system is inverted from the American system, or vice versa depending on your locale.

I don't know why, really... I figure it's the same reason we Americans say ZEE instead of ZED and dumped the superfluous L's and swapped the S's for Z's, and of course, drive on the right side of the road: spite. Anyway...

When I'm submitting a manuscript, would it be okay to submit based upon American punctuation style or should I laboriously tweak my manuscripts to the UK standard? Would it matter? Do I need two separate manuscripts -- one for the UK and another for the US?

Anyone have a clue?

If anyone can definitively answer why the systems are different, that would be cool, too. Interestingly, my English wife says she was always taught to use double quotes for dialogue. Yet, reading any UK published book, such as Harry Potter, I see single quotes. My wife is stumped like I am...

Cheers,

HSO

[This message has been edited by HSO (edited July 20, 2004).]

Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :

I'm not sure. But I thought I'd add that you need to check the spellings of colour, neighbour, etc...

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Piece of cake, RH... just need to change the Manuscript body Word Style language to UK and spell check.

Posted by Robyn_Hood (Member # 2083) on :

You would think that publishers would have style guides available. Of course if they were anything like a press style guide they'd charge $70-$80 for an updated version every two years

I wonder if you couldn't just enquire of the publisher if they have a preference for formatting style. I read Oxford Classics and most of them have the quote reversal you mentioned, but it doesn't change my comprehgension of the text. If you're just submitting a query it might not matter. Once they accept the manuscript the style would probably be more important.

However these are just my ramblings and are not based on any actual experience with publishing in the UK

Posted by Gwalchmai (Member # 1807) on :

I never realised about the single/double quotes thing but a quick flick through my rather limited library shows that, while single definitely appears to be the most popular choice, some books use double so I guess it must depend on the publisher. That said, I was taught to use double for dialogue too and have always used double in my writing for speech and single for quotes.

I have never encountered the end punctuation outside of the speech marks before though. Maybe it was just a printing error.

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

There's a really great book on punctuation called "Eats shoots and Leaves," that I picked up in London last month. Very witty, very clear guide to British punctuation.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Mary: My wife assures me that a copy of that book is forthcoming for my b-day next week. I did read the first 10 pages of it in W.H. Smith's yesterday [£9.99 for such a tiny book! That's $17.00! I'm sure it will be worth it]... I can't wait to read it as my punctuation could stand some improvment, too.

On a diff. note, next time you're coming to London, let me know... We can point you to several nice restaurants 'n' stuff.

Gwalchmai: Sorry, that was my error -- I had rewritten the sentence twice and messed it up. But, punctuation often does fall outside of quotes and parentheses in certain situations.

Robyn: That's a good idea... I'll start investigating UK publishers and get it straight from the horse's mouth. I'm becoming more and more distrustful of web-based advice sites because I've been mislead substantially by those who have no idea what they're talking about [not referring to this Forum or even this site -- I mean other web sites]. There is quite a bit of misinformation floating around out there.

Anyway, I was hoping to circumvent the necessity for doing the research myself by asking here...

Thanks anyway.

Posted by Jules (Member # 1658) on :

The UK way of punctuating quotations is to put closing punctuation inside the quotation marks if there is punctuation present in the quoted sentence at the same point. A lot of people get this wrong. So, your example above is almost correct, but the exclamation mark should be inside the last quote. I think we're moving slowly toward the American style, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

There is no standard on single/double quotation marks, as far as I can tell. I've been told that educational publishers _always_ use double, and every school teacher I've heard of teaches using doubles, but outside of schools the standard seems to be singles.

The Oxford Manual of Style is fairly definitive in matters like this, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg (I got my copy from TSP, www.etsp.co.uk who are a fairly good non-fiction book club).