I have always followed the British spelling standard. My Word document and all of my Office Suite programs are formatted for British spelling. I am from Canada so this shouldn't be a problem. But I lived in London, UK (and now Jersey) so British has been my reality for the last two decades. So it was with a heavy heart that I changed my settings in Word and on my computer to American spelling. The other unintended consequence of this is that it changed the characters that popped up when typing (my computer thinks my keyboard has become American--but I'm still on the same British keyboard). The most noticeable was the quotation mark and the @ sign. On my British keyboard, the @ sign is next to the shift key, sharing the same key as the ' sign. Now, it has switched and shares the same key as the number 2. This will confuse my fingers for a bit until they learn.
The learning curve never ends.
This evolution is compliments of my proofreader who just handed back my most recent novel "Slaves of Circumstance" and part of my "Man on the Run" series (Volume V). Until now, I was satisfied with a content edit. A content edit is AMAZING and should be enough. It is a line-by-line edit and feedback of your entire novel. Expensive but worth it. The proofreader is there to catch anything that isn't caught by the previous sieve. Hence, my transition to American spelling. To me, colour seems less so as color; utilise isn't as effective as utilize but that is the way things are. Tough beans, my friends!
The learning curve never ends.
This evolution is compliments of my proofreader who just handed back my most recent novel "Slaves of Circumstance" and part of my "Man on the Run" series (Volume V). Until now, I was satisfied with a content edit. A content edit is AMAZING and should be enough. It is a line-by-line edit and feedback of your entire novel. Expensive but worth it. The proofreader is there to catch anything that isn't caught by the previous sieve. Hence, my transition to American spelling. To me, colour seems less so as color; utilise isn't as effective as utilize but that is the way things are. Tough beans, my friends!
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