Out of curiosity, a reader-friend recently asked me why I did not edit the first winning writing contest entry to reflect American usage. The writer, Diana Thurbon, is Australian, and I left her Australian vocabulary intact even though Word-wise is an American ezine.
For others curious about the same thing, here is an excerpt of the response I sent:
"Admittedly, my usage [/grammar/punctuation] tips concentrate on American standard--and I probably should be more careful about saying that outright--but I don't feel the need to impose that standard on anyone else who contributes to [Word-wise]. It would have felt overly ethnocentric to Americanize "Ric" knowing its writer and many of its readers are not American....Besides, Americanizing the spelling would add nothing to the story but (in my opinion) would rob it of some of its characteristic Thurbon-ness....It would be like resetting Tess of the D'urbervilles in an Appalachian Mountain valley--wouldn't make the story any less compelling but would make it less uniquely Hardy, which is a different kind of loss but a loss just the same."
Dialects are not correct or incorrect, but they can be inappropriate to a given audience. It is not appropriate to expect to see American dialect in British publication, or vice versa. In the case of Word-wise, I am American and write and edit my own work in American dialect. But for writing contest entries, and when I feature other people's articles, I do not edit them to fit my dialect.
Expect to see another dialect in Word-wise again before too long. The second writing contest winner, whose piece will be published in the August issue, is a New Zealander. As yet, the third and final winner has not been identified. Keep those entries coming, regardless which dialect you use!
© 2008 by AnnaLisa Michalski