The vexed (and vexing) subject of britpicking

This is something that I feel reasonably strongly about anyway but two wholly different posts by auctasinistra and emmagrant01 have brought this post on. ( read more )

but this most definitely isn’t just an anti-American rant.

Further I have a certain amount of trouble with Hollywood( read more )

So I have always felt that the Americanisation of British things is A Bad Thing( but )

Really, thinking about it now this is a bit how I feel about angst in fics. ( read more )

So, moving on. I have, in the past, though rarely, having read a fic that for the most part is flawlessly britpicked commented, politely I hope, to point out an Americanism that slipped through. I’ve always been at a loss to understand why emmagrant01 and her friends found this so offensive ( read more )

It concerns and upsets me that there seem to be a lot of people out there who think that anyone who prefers a britpicked fic is an American hating language nazi to be vilified. ( read more )

And it’s weird isn’t it how emotional this whole britpicking thing is? If someone comments to point out a typo, grammar error etc nobody seems to object to that or feel that it is a negative comment on their spelling/grammar skills/worth as a person as a whole.

And finally, perhaps the whole problem is how subjective it all is. auctasinistra recently posted asking how a British person would say “She looked like she was going to cry”. I commented to say that in casual chat I thought they’d say exactly that. I still think this. But then a whole slew of other Brits commented to disagree. I can see how this is annoying/confusing for an author. And many years ago I saw a comment to the effect that in England ‘they call hot chocolate cocoa’. Whoever made that comment certainly hadn’t been anywhere near the British Isles for at least the last 40 years as cocoa and hot chocolate are two different things and both are readily available in Britain.

And that’s it really, just wanted to get that off my chest.