I’m not a native English speaker. Most of Vol. 1 has been written in German and translated into English as a second step. Since texting is about the last thing I do when I produce a comic (right before lettering, obviously), some pages were translated as late as the day before they went online.
Which never left much space for proofreading. Sometimes I’d find an error, correct it and re-upload the page, but mostly I had to rely on what insight I got from staring at the page for two hours while I finished it. So far, nobody complained. I’m quite good at this (for a German), and my typing is actually much better in English than in German. But there’s one blind spot I have that I really can’t see past:
American vs. British English.
Since both are equally foreign to me, I can’t distinguish the two. I know some things (labour vs. labor, laboratory vs., no wait, that’s not in the spelling), but the finer differences (especially when the two use entirely different words as in sandpit vs. sandbox) escape me. Entirely. Totally.
In case you wondered, I’m aiming for American spelling. (Since half of my international readers are Americans, and since I think I’m most confident with that.) But the spelling I learned at school was British, half the authors I read are British, though some are published by American publishers. And don’t get me started about all the Canadians in the mix! So whatever comes out of me is bound to be a cross-cultural mess.
It’s okay for the webcomic to have an occasional mistake in it, and I’ve seen loads of printed comics, both independent and major, with lots of errors. (My guess is, they’re taking it into account as something they can do right once the trade is due.) But I don’t want my book to be like that. After all, Conny should set an example for first-graders all over the world, shouldn’t she?
Since I can’t fix what I can’t see, this is my call for you, dear readers. This is your chance to tell me where I suck! Anything you found while browsing through the comic, just drop me a line and help make this book a better one!
Or, if you know of a good web resource, I’d be happy to hear about that, too.
Thanks in advance!