: Re: Avoiding cultural differences I'm not a native English speaker, but I write in English. I'm now visiting the US, and I have made some very interesting observation regarding the way ordinary life

Little things like this are called Shibboleths and they can be very hard to spot. See, for instance Inglorious Basterds where the spy is shot for ordering whisky with the wrong number of fingers. Sometimes it won't even be as specific as country to country, but could vary from state to state, or even city to city. For instance two large UK supermarkets are "Tesco" and "Asda" but a working class Londoner would almost always refer to these as "Tescos" or Asdas", pluralising them for no real reason other than it fits in their pattern of language and syllable use better. If you didn't live in the UK, you would have no reason to know this.

The best bet for something like this is to find a native to proof read your MS, specifically looking for shibboleths. If you can't get hold of a native because your story is set in an obscure place, then you're probably OK as the number of people that would spot it is much smaller.

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: You are hitting an interesting question here. I am a native French speaker and I struggled with the same issue when I learnt English. My English writing used to reflect my French upbringing.

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: How can you build an interactive tone into articles? I was wondering about tone in articles lately. My articles don't tend to be interactive. It feels like most of them are just flowing one

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: Depends on what your "limit" is. If you are limiting yourself to one character, then yes: the Harry Potter series is told in third person limited omniscient, and we get Harry's thoughts,

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: Does this sign-up email announcement sound friendly and conversational? This is version 2 of this post The intended audience is from 16-45 m/f, they have given me their email address and will

: Re: Avoiding cultural differences I'm not a native English speaker, but I write in English. I'm now visiting the US, and I have made some very interesting observation regarding the way ordinary life

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: You are hitting an interesting question here. I am a native French speaker and I struggled with the same issue when I learnt English. My English writing used to reflect my French upbringing.

: How can you build an interactive tone into articles? I was wondering about tone in articles lately. My articles don't tend to be interactive. It feels like most of them are just flowing one

: Depends on what your "limit" is. If you are limiting yourself to one character, then yes: the Harry Potter series is told in third person limited omniscient, and we get Harry's thoughts,

: Does this sign-up email announcement sound friendly and conversational? This is version 2 of this post The intended audience is from 16-45 m/f, they have given me their email address and will

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