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Q&A Why is "Ser" used in Game of Thrones rather than "Sir"?

To look at this from a more general writing perspective it enables the author to convey the "strangeness" of their world without compromising the readers ability to understand what they are conveyi...

posted 5y ago by motosubatsu‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T15:32:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44763
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:45:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44763
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T11:45:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
To look at this from a more general writing perspective it enables the author to convey the "strangeness" of their world without compromising the readers ability to understand what they are conveying.

You know that in English the same title is "Sir" so when you see "Ser" it clearly tells you that you aren't in the world you know but the similarity means that you don't need any exposition from the author to tell you what the title means.

When there's a large amount of worldbuilding going on (Dragons, wights, etc) you're going to have to do a certain amount of exposition but where you can do something that's self-evident all the better. Especially given the books are written in third-person limited and there's no audience surrogate it helps you avoid situations where characters have to think about something that they wouldn't naturally do in order to explain it to the reader.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-04-24T13:59:12Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 9