Fellow writers, have you ever been editing a book, possibly not for the first time, and found yourself thinking, "I hope that people other than me find something interesting in that scene where X happens, because I don't mean to do this but every time I revise it it gets longer?"
Incidentally, if I have never made my opinion on the matter clear, I think the British way of handling final punctuation and quotation marks is superior to the American way; however, I used the American style here. I don't think I have it in me to be a grammatical expat, though. While I prefer British punctuation, British spelling is not my favourite. And while I do consider my self to hold a black belt in the English language, being able to pick and choose among grammar rules is the rightful territory of 10th-dan linguists, not myself.
Switching between British and American English and grammar is definitely risky. I write with British spellings for work (and to some extent punctuation, though that's more technical punctuation than British per-se), and I have been doing a lot of writing for work, and the result is that now I am constantly mixing the two when I try to write "American" to someone and that, particularly late at night, I can stare at a word for a long time and have no idea whether it's supposed to use s, c, or z and whether or not it takes two l's. Even my spell check doesn't know anymore, as it's British in some programs and US in others. Gah.
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