Posted by Ed Kiser on February 26, 2014 at 06:32:46 user Kisered.
PIGEON POST P265
"W... E...," said Dick, looking out the letters as Titty
made them, "L... L... Well."
This line was found in all three of the editions I have on
hand of "Pigeon Post."
When I was typing in all twelve of these books, my American
spell checker had a fit with the British spellings. It was
quite an education to discover the many differences in the
American and the British usage of a common language, English.
There were those times I felt the need to "correct" something
only to decide that it was just British, and that I was the
one to correct my mode of thinking when dealing with the
Ransome series.
Sometimes I cannot depend on the accuracy of my own judgement
so I hesitate to label some usage as a "typo" - as for
example, in the above quote from PP, I would have said it
slightly differently, as "checking out" or "looking up", but
the "looking out" usage just seemed odd. Is this indeed a
typo, and the "out" should be "up"? Or is this simply
something else for me to learn about my British cousins and
their mode of speech?
I am sure my American could be taken as a bit odd to the
Brits as well.
So, ya'll hep me out with this...
Ed Kiser, Kentucky, USA