Time for a little grumpiness!

[TMark]

When I attend tournaments and Congresses, I have to show my salesman's face, being pleasant to all and sundry, in the hope of making sales of the GoGoD database. However, at home I can sometimes let my natural grumpiness take over.

When I was working for a living, I used to send out to a number of offices a quarterly newsletter on personnel management, but found that a remarkable number of the managers it was sent to did not read it or took no notice. In our office, we had a saying that we should really send it in Swaheli, to force them to translate it back into English, so that they would then definitely read it. All this is a lead up to the fact that, on our webpage, we had a statement that said "All prices are inclusive of postage and packing." In the past couple of weeks I have received emails from around the globe where each customer has looked at that statement and said that it couldn't really apply to them and that I would need to charge them more. Now I obviously missed a trick and should have charged them for the post, packing, bus fare and wear and tear on my shoes, but as you will have guessed, I told them that what we said is what we do; all prices are inclusive of post and packing. But why is it that we have now had to amend our statement to make it even more clear? Cannot people read what we say and accept that we mean what we say? Here endeth the rant of the day.

Best wishes.

[Joaz Banbeck]

... "All prices are inclusive of postage and packing."

... But why is it that we have now had to amend our statement to make it even more clear? Cannot people read what we say and accept that we mean what we say? ...

The problem is that you are using British English, whereas much of the world speaks American English. Try the phrase "All prices include postage and handling".

[daniel_the_smith]

I think what is happening is that most people assume you only mean within your own country, as it's actually extremely rare (as in, you're the only people I've ever heard of that do it) for international shipping to be included in the price of something (speaking as someone living in the US, of course).

Of course, if the customers you're speaking of are all from the UK, then your theory is more likely...

[Tami]

Why would somebody from England want to use American English? If you're from the Anglosphere, you should not be fazed by English English, and if you're not, then you can't escape the fact that American English is not actually the definitive version of the language.

[Joaz Banbeck]

American English may not be the definitive version, but it has become by far the most popular version. I'm not saying that this is a necessarily a good thing, merely that it has happened.
If you want to sell to people with a minimum of confusion, you use the language that is easiest for them.

[Javaness2]

Why do people have to keep on starting new threads? There are plenty of threads to read already, and we shouldn't need anymore. New threads are just a darned nuisance.

[TMark]

Two minor points; Java, why not combine all the threads into one, then there would only be one to read. On the topic of US and British English, none of the customers who asked me the question was based in the US, but they were from English-speaking countries.

Best wishes.

[Bantari]

When I attend tournaments and Congresses, I have to show my salesman's face, being pleasant to all and sundry, in the hope of making sales of the GoGoD database. However, at home I can sometimes let my natural grumpiness take over.

When I was working for a living, I used to send out to a number of offices a quarterly newsletter on personnel management, but found that a remarkable number of the managers it was sent to did not read it or took no notice. In our office, we had a saying that we should really send it in Swaheli, to force them to translate it back into English, so that they would then definitely read it. All this is a lead up to the fact that, on our webpage, we had a statement that said "All prices are inclusive of postage and packing." In the past couple of weeks I have received emails from around the globe where each customer has looked at that statement and said that it couldn't really apply to them and that I would need to charge them more. Now I obviously missed a trick and should have charged them for the post, packing, bus fare and wear and tear on my shoes, but as you will have guessed, I told them that what we said is what we do; all prices are inclusive of post and packing. But why is it that we have now had to amend our statement to make it even more clear? Cannot people read what we say and accept that we mean what we say? Here endeth the rant of the day.

Best wishes.

If this kinds of stuff gives you grief, just lower your prices by $5 and then charge the $5 for S&H.
Or go on a limb provide alternate prices with and without shipping so people can chose.

World is full of strange people... lol

[kirkmc]

Why would somebody from England want to use American English? If you're from the Anglosphere, you should not be fazed by English English, and if you're not, then you can't escape the fact that American English is not actually the definitive version of the language.

The received wisdom is that you sell in the language of your customers.

Thinking that everyone who is familiar with US English would understand everything in UK English is ludicrous. I taught EFL for 8 years, and the number of confusing expressions is legion.

[BobC]

Why would somebody from England want to use American English? If you're from the Anglosphere, you should not be fazed by English English, and if you're not, then you can't escape the fact that American English is not actually the definitive version of the language.

The received wisdom is that you sell in the language of your customers.

Thinking that everyone who is familiar with US English would understand everything in UK English is ludicrous. I taught EFL for 8 years, and the number of confusing expressions is legion.

You taught EFL to Americans?

[kirkmc]

Why would somebody from England want to use American English? If you're from the Anglosphere, you should not be fazed by English English, and if you're not, then you can't escape the fact that American English is not actually the definitive version of the language.

The received wisdom is that you sell in the language of your customers.

Thinking that everyone who is familiar with US English would understand everything in UK English is ludicrous. I taught EFL for 8 years, and the number of confusing expressions is legion.

You taught EFL to Americans?

Are you serious? No, I taught in France, mostly, and in Norway for a year.

[John Fairbairn]

Thinking that everyone who is familiar with US English would understand everything in UK English is ludicrous. I taught EFL for 8 years, and the number of confusing expressions is legion.

This may give a false impression to the many L19 readers who are not native speakers of English.

Yes, it is possible to make a long list of UK-US differences. I think most of us would probably know almost every item on the list anyyway, but in practice these words have very little impact on discourse. A bigger problem for an adult, in any country, is understanding the local teenage slang. Also, though it's faded away now with the rise of national television, I had much more of a problem when I was young because I was brought up speaking a northern dialect (not just accent) that poncey southerners found impenetrable. I'm sure that sort of thing was the same in the USA, too.

For a more realistic view of the current situation, I offer this: when I was on holiday in the USA recently, I took my Kindle which has a copy of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Possibly because of my dialect upbringing I find I have no problems at all in reading ME fast. But that is not to say I know every word, and on a couple of occasions I looked up a word on the internet. In the course of doing this, I came across a site run by a Harvard scholar, Larry D. Benson. He rather impressed me, so on my return I bought a copy of The Riverside Chaucer he edited (so much for saving money with the Kindle!).

Although he was evidently American (as the D. indicated), the book was published in England by the Oxford University Press. Because I have been in the reverse position (writing in British English for the US publisher Slate & Shell), I started to wonder whether they had edited his English into British form. I decided to let the text tell me. I read for about 15 pages of dense text (about 1,000 words a page) before I found the answer. When it came it was the spelling "labor", and not actually a different word or grammatical usage. In fact, of differences of the latter two types there appeared to be none, even in the subsequent text.

I presume this is a slightly freakish result, probably because he was writing about a topic that has no modern cultural differences. But it accords with my own experience of how little difficulty there is. I've always regarded the old saw about "two countries divided by a common language" as one of the daftest sayings ever. The real divisions are cultural.

I've had problems in the USA when asking for "white coffee". In some cases the look of astonishment is so strong that I've wondered whether the word "white" has become the w-word in pc-land. But when I explain that I want coffee with milk in it, I usually get a remark along the lines of "oh, you want half and half". To which I say, "No, I want milk, please". What I then normally end up with is a cup of coffee and a large pot of milk, which is at least much better than being given fiddly little mini-pots full of some indeterminate white stuff. That to me is a cultural difference.

The reason I cleave to my own version of English is simply that I write more fluently in it. If I tried to write in "American" I think I'd soon sound odd, like the non-natives here who try to use slangy phrases like "What the heck". And because I often choose to write in a fairly colloquial way by way of entertainment, editing from one form to another doesn't work very well.

[kirkmc]

No, it's not just cultural. At times, single words can be a problem. I came across one yesterday. Apparently, in the tech industry in the UK, they speak about "shifting" products. In US English, we would say "shipping" or "moving," for the number of units of a product that is sent to stores but not yet sold.

I have been watching the TV series Ashes to Ashes recently. The very last line was: “A word in your shell-like, pal." I had absolutely no idea what this meant, and even when watching, had to go back and turn the subtitles on to even understand what words they were.

[BobC]

EFL- would you Adam and Eve it?

Shell like = shell like ear... cockney slang.

[kirkmc]

Regarding the actual terminology that causes the problem for Mark. It's worth looking at what others do when they are targeting people from more than just the UK. For example, the Book Depository, whose prices include free shipping, use the following:

"Free delivery worldwide on all our books."

I think Mark's "postage" is sort of clear, but "packing" is certainly not a word US English speakers are familiar with. In US English it's "shipping and handling," though I've always felt that the word "handling" - like "packing" - is superfluous. Does one really expect to have to pay for an envelope or box?

But the Book Depository's choice of "delivery" is probably the most understandable choice.