Betty Birney’s Blog

I’ve just been proofreading the galleys for THE PRINCESS AND THE PEABODYS for my British publisher, Faber and Faber. It will be published there later this year. Each time I do the UK proofreading, I find some surprising differences in the English language. Of course there are the obvious ones: favorite color in the U.S. becomes favourite colour in the U.K., the quotation marks are reversed (single quotes for a direct quotation, double quotes for a quote-with-a-quote), no periods after Mr. and Mrs. in the UK. What we Americans call “math,” the Brits call “maths.” Still, we manage to understand each other pretty well.  I usually keep a running tab of the changes that are made on the Humphrey books – see Briticisms on the Humphreyville page of my website.

(And by the way, if you haven’t checked out THE PRINCESS AND THE PEABODYS page of my site, you must! You can take a quiz to find out if you’re a princess or a Peabody … send a cool ecard … or read up on tiaras.)

My very favorite (or favourite) change was in FRIENDSHIP ACCORDING TO HUMPHREY. At the Room 26 Valentine’s Day party, I had them serve punch and cookies. There was a horrified reaction which I didn’t understand at all but we soon sorted it out. In England, “punch” only refers to drinks with alcohol in them, so the copy editor was thinking we served alcohol to elementary school students. We changed it to apple juice.

In case you didn’t know, I love the UK, I love my UK friends, and I love Faber and Faber, my UK publisher! Check out their Humphrey website and cool Humphrey game at www.funwithhumphrey.com.

Here’s the list I just made:

U.S.                                                         U.K.

analyze                                                 analyse

apologize                                              apologize

bleachers                                              further benches

’cause                                                  ‘cos

chow down                                           put it away

center                                                  centre

chips                                                    crisps

draft                                                     draught

hodge-podge                                       hotchpotch

honor                                                    honour

plunked                                                plonked

practice                                                practise

pry                                                       prise

quieted                                                 quietened

sink                                                      basin

sneakers                                              trainers

specialty                                              speciality

washcloth                                             facecloth