Reading in British

My head is spinning. I love a good British mystery (Dorothy Sayers and P. D. James being my current favorites). You may know that there are some differences between the British and American styles, beyond the funny words those Brits use for perfectly ordinary things like sweaters and wrenches. The vocabulary differences I can handle—it’s sometimes like a puzzle, trying to figure out what an unfamiliar Britishism means without resorting to looking it up. The punctuation is a different story though. Sometimes I swear I see stars.

Like today. I’ve been reading Morag Joss’ Funeral Music. (Quite a fun read so far, featuring world-class cellist Sara Selkirk, who turns amateur detective after finding the body of a museum director who has been murdered in a Roman bath—in Bath, of all places. And how could I pass up an author named “Morag Joss”?) Everything in the book is going along fine, except the dialogue. The dialogue is driving me crazy.

It’s not what the characters say—it’s the quotation marks within which they say it. Double marks inside single marks, with commas outside the double marks. You know,

‘They called it “rambling”, is what she told me.’

Instead of

“They called it ‘rambling,’ is what she told me.” (Not an actual quote from the book.)

The fact that I’m even bothered by this is the most troubling thing about the situation. I don’t understand why these little punctuation marks are upsetting me now. I’ve certainly read enough British books to be able to deal with the basics of the style differences. I usually find the differences interesting, not distracting.

Could this be a sign that my brain is beginning to harden? Is this what I have to look forward to when I finally move into the Old Editors’ Home? Or perhaps my editorial instincts are on overdrive and I just need to lighten up in my leisure reading. Or—and this is absolutely the worst thing I can think of—am I becoming a hardened old editor with such entrenched ideas of “right” and “wrong” that I’m no longer flexible enough to appreciate other possibilities?

Oh, no—anything but that!