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Come into my Parlor

I believe the spider once invited the fly into her parlour, or was it her parlor? The answer probably depends on whether you're English or American. But the question is, which spelling would you expect in a novel, and what difference would it make.

When a Regency heroine invites the "Honourable Fred" into her "parlour," English readers accept the words (and spellings) without a second thought, while American ones, those attuned to Jane Austen movies at least, hear and smile at a peculiarly English tone of voice. Meanwhile, when the Regency heroine says "parlor" (or "honor"), English readers hear an American voice, quickly setting the scene as somewhere across the Pond... but what do Americans hear? (Or Australians even?)

If it matters that your readers hear an English intonation, it might be good to use English spelling, in dialog at least. But that gives rise to the vexing question of what spelling to use in narration. Is the narrator English or American, anglophile or purist, part of the story or a disinterested observer?

Most readers, of course, won't notice which spelling is used. But the human eye is attuned to "change," so changing the spelling midstory, or even between dialog and narration, will almost certainly attract attention. Will it distract your readers? Will it make them stop to question the voice (or spelling)? Will it draw them out of the story?

Sometimes the narration is a vehicle for the author's commentary, in which case an American author must surely use American spelling. But if the author's intent is invisibility, letting the story absorb readers' attention to the exclusion of the world around them, then the choice of spelling and consistency of spelling become important. At this point the editor, also trying to remain invisible, might ask which spelling the author wants, which voice the author wants the reader to hear, and even, in the case of a series author, which spelling was used in the rest of the series.

Parlour or parlor; the honorable or honourable Fred; debts of honor or honour; color or colour... not all words need to be consistently English or American, but perhaps each individual word should be self-consistent... perhaps. The editor (also trying to invisible) might notice and offers a suggestion, but the author makes a choice. And that's as it should be, at least in this editor's parlor.

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The importance of commas

I saw a blogpost entitled "Can a Comma Be Antisemitic?" So of course, I had to read it. You can find the original post at  https://weekly.israelbiblecenter.com/can-a-comma-be-antisemitic/ . And it's fascinating. The question is: What's the difference between "The Jews, who persecuted the Lord, drove us out" and "The Jews who persecuted the Lord drove us out." Or equivalently, what's the difference between "We have to throw out apples, which are wormy" and "We have to throw out apples which are wormy"? The article explains how the comma makes all the difference between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive clause. In the first (apple) case, all apples are wormy and must be thrown out. In the second, we restrict ourselves to discarding wormy apples - a much more sensible idea. (And in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, those commas really might be misplaced.) In the Bible, commas matter! In writing,  commas matter!

The joys of Word or the joy of words?

When Word red-underlines things like we'll, they'd, hadn't etc., you might be excused for thinking the program's gone crazy. And you might be right. The problem, if you happen to be running spellcheck (or even trying to read without distraction), is to figure out which particular kind of crazy. After all, those red underlines do kind of draw the eye, distracting from the joy of the author's words. So what's an editor to do? As usual, the first answer is to try Google. Then try asking the same question 300 different ways. And finally, fix it. Which means I've now learned how to tell Word that certain words are not English (and that others are), and how to make Word make all the wrongly flagged Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish words revert to English (US) - or even English (UK) or English (Australian) if desired. So here's how it's done: Open your document. Go to one of those wrongly flagged words, and rig