Talk:Russell Hoban

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Re: 'American'-> US which User:Rossami did on this page:

It's hard to conceive of any circumstances under which "American writer" or "American filmmaker" or any such construction could be "ambiguous"; i.e., not mean an inhabitant of the United States of America. I'm Canadian, and I think so! American is just the adjective referring to people from the USA in that context. It is 100% pure English phrasing, and 'US writer' or 'US filmaker' sounds weak by contrast.

Were it possible to confuse this with another meaning of 'American' (an inhabitant of South America, a native American Indian) it would NOT be in THIS context where it's clearly referring to the country of origin in the same sense as 'Canadian writer', 'British filmmaker', etc.

Encyclopedias use "American xxx", including the Britannica (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=84515&tocid=0&query=kate%20chopin&ct= -- "American novelist and short story writer"); Encyclodepia.com: (http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/c/chopin-k1.asp -- "American author..."); The Columbia encyclopedia (http://www.bartleby.com/65/ch/Chopin-K.html -- "American author"), etc. etc.

See Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (US vs American). Lots of people disagree. But even if only a few people disagree, why would we deliberately choose the less precise term? Rather than argue about it here, I am only going to insist that you pipe the link. Rossami 16:31, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)