From a book review in the NYT's Science Times section today:
Despite his encompassing knowledge about noise, Dr. Goldsmith can seem oddly out of touch with it personally. It is not just that the American publisher put the British edition straight into type, resulting in mildly inept Britishisms. (A 1930 report found the major source of noise complaints in New York to be "lorries -- and so it is to this day.")
The only Britishism cited is that "lorries," and I can't think of any sense in which it could be called an inept Britishism, so I'm guessing the original (or intended) word was inapt. (Meaning that Manhattanites will find it jarring to hear that lorries are roaring down Second Avenue.) But so far it's still inept at the Times website, so maybe the writer and editor think that's what they meant.
The author's implication -- that selling Americans a book in British English is a lazy shortcut -- is an interesting counterpoint to recent complaints about the opposite problem: publishers' insistence on Americanizing the language of British books (and not just Harry Potter). Both Ben Trawick-Smith ("'Americanized' Non-American Novels") and Tim Parks ("Learning to Speak American") think American readers can easily handle, and would usually prefer, British writing in its original form, and their blog readers agree. The discussion continues, with another huge cast of commenters, at Language Log, where Mark Liberman looks into the sources of Parks's editing woes. If you missed any of these in the pre-holiday scramble, now's the time to put up your feet and enjoy them.
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