#151: Defending punctuation like it’s the Revolutionary War.

Last October, when I scribbled my sloppy signature on a book contract with a British publisher, I jumped for joy. Thirty-six years of Great Britain shaping my life paraded through my mind:

That terrified 20-year-old student dragging her suitcase through Heathrow. An office off of Old Street with grungy desks and dodgy bathrooms in my first post-MBA consulting gig with the Royal Mail. Mike getting down on one knee on a rickety Thames pier to ask for my hand in marriage. Bleary-eyed Heathrow stopovers on my way to military bases in Kuwait and Qatar. Sleeping under the stars in west Wales with my new work fam.

Britain, you had me at hello. I’m a card-carrying Anglophile. Fifth drink free.

A year after that historic leap, I’m learning that having a British publisher came with some unexpected lessons.

Not about Britain… About me.

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I was reviewing the copyedited proofs for Do Loss, pages spread across my kitchen island.

The publishing team’s close eye had saved me from some embarrassing errors. From using figures of speech that might offend (kicking the dog, anyone?), using terms that might confuse (warfighter rather than servicemen and women), ensuring that examples of collective loss were global (9/11, Australian wildfires, Grenfell towers).

After all that work, I was confident we were close with this version. So I was happily sipping my coffee as I skimmed the text I’ve now read a hundred times, when a microscopic blank space caught my eye. Then another. Then another.

I love my resilience researchers, my neuroscientists, my PhDs. I reference their ideas throughout Do Loss. But their names in print felt…off.

Wait, the tiny little dot!

The period after Dr. was gone. Dr. Bonanno had become Dr Bonanno. Same for Dr Ann Masten. Dr Scott Small.

I scratched my head. Then last weekend’s copy of the Financial Times, its pink pages in their weekly spot on my kitchen island, pulled my attention. I slid it in front of me, scanning the front page of the iconoclastic British paper. Sure enough, there was an article looking back at Covid, quoting Dr Fauci.

No period in sight.

We’d been at this for months, iterating and updating, making my book more accessible to an international audience by favoring a neutral version of English. We carefully balanced this with one obvious fact: I’m an American and have a uniquely American way of communicating.

Seeing abbreviations without a period, I should have been all potayto, potahto. All keep calm and carry on.

Not so much.

It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I lurched up from my stool, its legs scraping backwards on the hardwood floor. I raised my hands and cried out to the heavens: “Why oh why British English do you torture me so?! I thought we were friends!”

So then I wondered… what the heck is wrong with me? I’m really having a meltdown over punctuation??

I wasn’t the one to invent American English. I didn’t pull out a black sharpie, crossing out the U in colour, armour and honour. I didn’t zigzag through the ‘S’ in prioritise, monetise, analyse, converting it to a Z. I didn’t decide to capitalize acronyms or use a period after Dr.

So why do I feel so... accountable for it?

Actually, now that I think about it, why is American English different in the first freaking place?

Turns out, we mostly have our pal Noah Webster to thank/blame.

Back in the 1820s, this Webster guy wielded his quill like a scalpel, tearing British English to bits. He spelled words the way they sounded to him, dropping U’s and inserting Z’s, trading out C’s for S’s. Then he codified his choices in both his famous Webster’s Dictionary and a book to torture primary school kids called The Blue Backed Speller. One hundred million copies later, his vision of giving the US it’s own unique identity through it’s own unique language, became reality.

And boy, did he ever succeed. Because here I sit, two hundred years later, with my love of all things British clashing with my very American identity in the shape of one tiny dot.

But I wasn’t always weirdly defensive of American copyediting rules. For most of my young life, I would happily abandon my American identity at the drop of a hat.

Back in 1989, as a 20-year-old backpacker with my Eurorail pass and meager budget, everyone would treat our Canadian doppelgangers, their flag proudly displayed on their backpacks, with warmth. Us loud Americans? No flag needed to identify us. Eye rolls and sighs were our welcome wagon, along with the occasional ‘no room at the inn’ when there were clearly bunks to spare. It left an impression.

So over the next thirty years, I learned to play the field. I decided when I cared if someone saw me as an American. And when I didn’t.

Sometimes I chose seamless integration. The Lufthansa flight attendant would speak to me in German, I would give a noncommittal nod in response — just one more unbothered, no-nonsense, monochrome European loading my roller bag into the overhead bin.

Other times, I chose in-your-face American-ness. Loud and proud. I’d regale my London cabbie with tales of dressing up for Halloween or attending Friday night American football games. He would turn his head, speaking through the space in the plexiglass window at a stoplight: “I thought that was only in the movies!!”

When I started my pilgrimage on St Olav’s Way last summer, I wondered how an American in rural Scandinavia would be received. But I also had no interest in trying to camouflage myself for four weeks. My backwards baseball cap, my rapid-fire questions, my enthusiasm, my constant hugging all gave me away.

Turns out, nobody cared.

Pilgrims and hosts and grocery store cashiers all spoke English as our common language — the middle ground for the backpack-wearing Dutch, Danes, Germans, Belgians, and occasional American, and the Swedes and Norwegians feeding, lodging, and hosting us along the way.

And those who specifically commented on my nationality seemed charmed by it.

Sverker, a 70-year-old sprite of a Swede, hosted me on my tenth day of walking.

Dinner accidentally lasted three hours as we covered every conversational base: his career as a gym teacher, his beloved Harley Davidson, our shared experience losing a spouse. He had me laughing out loud at his adventures on a six-week trip he’d taken with his wife Ingrid to America a decade prior, complete with pictures of them in wild west costumes.

As I finally cleared my dishes, we talked about breakfast.

“What time would you like to eat?”

“How about 7:30 or 8?”

“Which one?”

“Let’s do 7:45?”

He laughed. I apologized.

“Well, at least you will not forget me. What other pilgrim asks for breakfast at 7:45?”

“That’s what I like about Americans. You are so… open.”

Those weeks in Sweden were the first time I’d been consistently praised for my American attributes: how we’ll talk to anyone, our ridiculous optimism, our generosity and flexibility.

But apparently I’m still prickly.

I still feel the need to defend my American way of being to others, going so far as to defend my American punctuation to others. (Insert eyeroll.)

Apparently, I’m not here, in my treehouse kitchen, writing a book that I want to be as accessible as possible for everyone around the world. Instead, I am trapped in those moments when I’d been judged for being American. Standing in the Brussels hotel lobby when the concierge brushed me off. Fuming after a 30 min wild good chase that a Munich gate agent sent me on. All those times I obscured my identity so people wouldn’t even get that far.

But I am here now. No one is chiding me for being American. We’re just editing a book.

We solved what shall forever be known as The Period Problem, and Do Loss is off to the printers. It turned out just right — a concrete playbook for navigating loss and change, understandable by anyone who reads the English language.

It’s still me. There are quirky lines and silly sayings, straight from this enthusiastic American’s brain. References to the Lone Ranger. Bruce Springsteen. Elvis. Nirvana (the band, not the state of being). I like to think it’s strikes a happy medium: authentic but not so American-centric that the point gets lost.

As I finished writing these words, Connor walked into the kitchen and sat down next to me. I sipped my tea while explaining what the post is about.

“Yeah, you know, in New Zealand I had some of that same feeling. About how people saw me as an American. I just had to accept it and move on.”

Out of the mouths of babes. Or 6’2” young men.

“What kind of tea are you having, mom? My New Zealand friends used to drink Oolong.”

I turn the box around to show him the label.

“English Breakfast!”

Laughing at myself,

Sue

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