>>Here's the funny part, if by funny you mean mind-bendingly
>>frustrating, about this branch of the thread: The character who says
>>it? Is me. And I think maybe I know how I talk.
>
>I feel your pain. As a writer who grew up in Oklahoma and Arkansas,
>spent most of a decade in New Orleans, and now lives in Dallas, having
>beta readers who are in the northeast and the UK gets... interesting.
>Sometimes we know that what we're doing is a colloquialism, but
>sometimes we just go "Bwah?" and shake our heads, because it seems
>perfectly normal to us.

Of course this is why, in things like the Harry Potter fandom, we have people like myself who over the service of "Britpicking" (not that there's any one true British speach pattern, but it's a start). I've never heard of a similar thing for US-based fandoms though.

And, of course, in this case G's entirely right. :) For some reason I didn't even notice the comma in question there, reading it in my own idiom (but I suspect I'd probably hear it in my own idiom too, because my brain would interpret it as an accental rather than idiomatic difference).

Hmm, I seem to be rambling to nowhere, so I'll stop.

S.