The charms and travails of a copy editor — British English

I work mostly with American English, meaning I use Merriam-Webster’s dictionary for spelling and one of the top style guides for American English, The Chicago Manual of Style, when I copyedit texts.

But I occasionally find myself dealing with a text that a client prefers be in British English, and I am thus cast adrift. So. I go right away to the Oxford English dictionary online — can you get more British — and then the trouble starts.

Here is a prime example: the word recognize. The online Oxford dictionary shows it spelled -ize, but it also lists a variation for British (in the British dictionary!) with -ise. My logic says I could use recognize, but my client prefers the -ise spellings so I use recognise. But which is it? I mean, that is what dictionaries are for, to tell the user how to spell stuff!

To further emphasize that this is a British English page, note the single quotation marks — that is a dead giveaway that this is not an American text.

Well, says my logical mind, the examples provided in this most British of all dictionaries must surely use the spelling they call British and that most English people say they prefer (in my experience, they consider it a sine qua non). See for yourself.

It may not seem like much, but to someone who takes this work seriously and who strives to do the best job possible, it’s frustrating. I do my best to use the proper references, to follow rules that make sense, to be consistent throughout, and to ensure the text is understandable above all. If that means I have these moments of tearing my hair out, well — it goes with the territory.

On a serious note, The Chicago Manual of Style is much more detailed and thus instructive than The Oxford Style Manual. To illustrate, the index of the former has 129 pages; the latter, 26 pages.

PS My new challenge will be translating a French menu for a French restaurant into descriptions of the dishes in English. “Beef with potatoes” will just not do. Can’t wait.