[Matt Q]

I recently sent off some poems to an American magazine and later realised that one poem had the word "mould" in, which, in US English, would be "mold". So then I wondered if maybe I should have translated it.

It also occured to me that I've sent quite a view submissions to American magazines, or webzines with American editors, and even had some accepted, and never once thought about Americanising my English. I've never had any comments back about my use of British English.

So, I wondered: do editors generally expect poets to be fluent in other varieties of English, and translate their poems appropriately before sending them out? Am I likely to be alienating American editors by sending them poems in British English?

It also seems to me that there are actually quite a number of differences between British and US English. In addition to the spelling differences (color/colour, mould/mold, theater/theatre etc.) there are punctuation differences: US and UK dashes are different (in length and spacing), comma style-rules aren't the same (Oxford comma), capitalisation after colons is different, as are expectations about hyphen usage, the use of single vs double quotation marks, whether to put the punctuation inside or outside quotation marks and so on. Then there are word meanings/usages "career" vs "careen", "crisps" vs chips", "chips vs fries", "will vs shall" and so on. And some grammar usages: verb forms ("smelled" vs "smelt"), prepositions ("at the weekend" vs "on the weekend") and things like e.g. different rules around when to use "which" or "then", which I just recently came across.

How likely is a poet to know all this and get it right? It seems a lot to expect. I doubt I'd know most of the above if I hadn't spent so long hanging out at online poetry workshops, and I'm sure my knowledge is far from complete. I guess one could just set their word processor to the desired flavour of English and let the spell-checker and grammar-checker do their thing. Still, I wonder if it's just better to send the poem in your own version of English, and let the editor (a "native speaker") correct/translate if they decide they want to.

Anyway, I'm interested to know what others do, and what they think, and also if anyone's ever had any feedback on this from editors.

Matt

[Susan McLean]

Matt, I confess that if I am submitting to The Spectator in the UK, I often check my spelling and punctuation against what I know of UK norms and make my poem conform. That is even more crucial if there are differences in meaning or pronunciation of certain words. But I am confident that if the editor likes a poem, he or she will feel free to correct any differences that I missed, before publishing the poem. Some editors are comfortable with leaving regional and national variations intact, while others force everything to fit their local norms. Don't worry about it too much. I have spent most of my life as an American professor of British literature: it is not a stretch to comprehend what is written in either tongue.

Susan

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Matt,

I have no actual knowledge of American editor preferences except by reading the poems and guidelines they publish. I think I have seen only one journal that actually specified a use of a particular style manual in the case of poetry. I have seen many of them that encourage international writers to submit. I have seen poems published with UK spellings and idioms. I think there must be editors who are proud to include another aspect of diversity into their journals. My guess is that staying in an authentic voice might be the best strategy, but again, I have no real actual knowledge.

All the best,
Jim

[Roger Slater]

I've often submitted poems to British children's poetry anthologies, and I generally conform the spelling as best I can to the British spellings. I even (sometimes) change the quotation marks to single inverted commas instead of double, and I move punctuation marks outside the quote marks (if they're not part of the quote) instead of doing it the American way. But I don't think it matters. It's more a copy-edit sort of thing that editors can change on their own. I make the changes myself just so there's one less thing that an editor needs to be distracted by.

[Christine P'legion]

That's an interesting question, and one I admit I've never given much thought. I write in Canadian English, which is a bizarre hybrid that follows US conventions in some cases, UK conventions in others, and in some cases lets you use whichever of the two strikes your fancy. And I submit in Canadian English, too, even though my subs are probably weighted more toward US than Canadian outlets simply because of their higher numbers (Canada has approximately the same population as California).

So far it's never been an issue. Part of this, I think, is because there isn't a standard English on the internet, so people are more used to encountering different dialectical conventions than they may have been thirty years ago. But I would also expect a journal's standards to be enforced far more strictly for prose than for poetry -- where readers are already primed to expect a looser approach to language, punctuation, structure, etc. anyway.

[Carl Copeland]

Just don’t try rhyming Monty with dilettante or hoary with furore (US: furor) for your American publisher. I thought my beloved Britcoms had taught me everything about Britspeak, but I had to do some rewriting for a British editor who wanted to use my translations. I’m still getting over it.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Hi, Matt!

I've never had proofs from a US editor and seen my spelling or idioms changed. And none has ever asked me to change anything of that nature. Different spellings and idioms are good for everyone! They are an endless source of delight in my Aus/Us household!

I remember wondering the same as you in the early days of sending things out. In fact, I sent Don Share, at Poetry, a poem I wrote called 'Lingo' about this very issue, and he wrote back to say he was very close to publishing it, but decided not to, and thanked me for giving the whole office a good laugh!

Change nothing! Difference is delightful!

Cally

[Chris O'Carroll]

Any poetry magazine editor, whatever her or his native dialect of English, is likely to be British/American bilingual, so there’s little danger that your spellings (or mine when I submit to British journals) will be mistaken for lapses in literacy. Editors might revise our spelling to comply with some in-house style, but they won’t think there’s something wrong with us. (Well, not unless they get to know us personally.)

I try to make the appropriate changes in my overseas submissions – “courgette” for “zucchini”, “colour” for “color”, etc. But the editor at The Spectator has caught me out on occasion. For example, she has had to change my “cozy” to “cosy” and my “esophagus” to “oesophagus”. But those entries were both winners, so she clearly didn’t hold my foreign accent against me.

[Matt Q]

Thanks for your responses everyone!

Good to see there's consensus on this, and that I can just carry on submitting poems as I wrote them. That's a relief.

Matt

[R. S. Gwynn]

How should a first name like "St John" be spelled for American readers? "Sungeon"?