Dear American and British Writers: Let’s Unite and Become Friends

Does it matter if it’s my favorite or your favourite?

Is your writing marvelous or marvellous? Are you on an endeavor or endeavour to become the most successful writer on the planet? Has your writing become untrammeled or untrammelled?

Yes, I’m looking at you, Grammarly, as you highlight the British spellings.

Ever since I started writing on the Internet as a teenager, I’ve seen Brits and Americans argue about how words should be spelled. Can you believe Grammar Nazis go as far as to attack articles written in different versions of English?

“No, it’s not wrong!” I wanted to scream, and sometimes I have commented back at these people. “It’s just written in another form of English!”

One of my biggest pet peeves about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is that the book was “Americanized.” All of the British words were changed to American, which included changing “football” to soccer and “pounds” to “dollars”.

It made absolutely no sense, even in my ten-year-old mind. I knew back then that the Brits referred to American soccer as “football,” and the Brits didn’t use American dollars, so these words in a book set in London confused me.

Scholastic even went as far as to change the entire title of the first Harry Potter book because they thought American children wouldn’t find a title with the phrase Philosopher’s Stone “magical” enough:

In his 2015 Rowling biography, Philip W. Errington documented how Arthur A. Levine, who helms the Scholastic imprint that publishes “Harry Potter,” suggested the change when adapting the story for U.S. fantasy lovers.

“Levine noted that he needed a title that said ‘magic’ more overtly to American readers,” Errington writes.

“He [Levine] continued, ‘I certainly did not mind Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone but I can see, if you forget now what happened after, … why a book that is titled Philosopher’s Stone might seem more arcane or something. So the title that I had suggested to me and which I then turned to Jo was Harry Potter and the School of Magic. Jo very thoughtfully said, No ― that doesn’t feel right to me … there are objects that I would like. What if we called it the Sorcerer’s Stone?’” — The HuffPost

The publishers of Harry Potter underestimated the intelligence of American children. Fortunately, these changes were not made in future books in the series.

Growing up in the early 2000s, American children like myself were on the Internet at an early age. By eleven, I was talking to people from Europe on Internet message boards. I quickly became accustomed to the British spellings, and they never fazed me.

Now when I come across an article with the words “colour” and “favourite” in them, it does nothing more than tell me that the author is from a country that uses British English spellings. The same is true when I see single quotations used for speaking tags.

I’m currently completing a proofreading course, and all of the answer keys correct British spelling to American spelling (even though there’s an entire section of the course on British vs. American spellings). Some of the “practice” examples come from British literature. So, on every single worksheet, I’ve left comments noting that the spelling is correct in British English.

As a reader, if I know a book is published in the UK and takes place in the UK, I prefer to see British English. Why? Because it does not make sense to change the wording to American if it’s not set in America.

It’s just like how I wouldn’t expect to see American spellings in a British setting. However, this is far more common since publishers change the spellings to attract an American audience. Also, some British authors prefer writing in American English because they know they have a large following in the United States.

In the global world we live in, it just makes sense to understand all the spellings of English. We should accept the words as they’re written and not change them. If they’re in a dictionary somewhere, leave the words alone.

Dear American and British Writers,

Let’s unite and become friends.