Re: Free books

On 8/2/2025 7:29 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 03/08/25 01:57, Steve Hayes wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Aug 2025 13:03:05 +0200, [email protected] (J. J.
>> Lodder) wrote:
> 
>>> BTW, they say you write English (South African dialect)
>>
>> That's about right.
>>
>> People who don't specify such things somtimes are subjected to
>> criticism from American readers who complain about books being full
>> of spelling errors, and sometimes punctuation errors as well.
> 
> I've been surprised by the number of people who don't know that there
> are different dialects of English. I'm exposed regularly to different
> dialects on the TV news, so surely it should be hard to miss.
> 
> I have vaguely noticed that there are punctuation differences between
> AusE and AmE, but have never seen a place where the difference in rules
> is explained. The only one that really sticks out for me is the
> illogical placement of commas and periods on the wrong side of a
> quotation mark.
I think it was GBS who said "England, the US, two great nations 
separated by a common language."* As you show above, this quote never 
gets old; the world just keeps finding new pairs to comment on.

* Oscar Wilde espoused the similar "We have really everything in common 
with America nowadays, except, of course, language".
-- 
Jeff Barnett