OFFENSIVE WORDS AND PHRASES

HOW WORRIED SHOULD A FICTION WRITER BE?

Yes, we're living in a PC world and none of us fiction writers wants to give offence but sometimes, unwittingly, we can use a word or phrase that upsets someone somewhere.

So far I'm only aware of one instance. In one of my books I sent two of my characters to a restaurant where they were served with a dish composed of the parts of an animal most people don't bother to eat, mixed with breadcrumbs, herbs and spices. It's a dish that goes back several hundred years - not to everyone's taste and more men than women enjoy it, but all that's irrelevant. The thing is, it has a name which is unobjectionable in England but not so in the United States. I won't mention it here.

And that started me worrying. As an English writer, how many other words might I choose which could cause offence across the Atlantic? And what about Europe? Japan? India? There could be long lists worldwide which I'm not aware of !

So, as well as the differences in spelling between the United States and us on our island, I'll be searching Google and Bing to see if I can find those lists.