Young Writers Society

I'm writing my query, and odd as this may sound, it seems that I need to convey the phrase "SIM Card" (that plastic chip in your cell/mobile phone that holds your phone number and sometimes photos and stuff) in my query. As I might be sending this to agents in America/UK, I need to know if SIM cards are called SIM cards there, and if not, what is the common name for that part of the phone?

Also, I have another question, which may be more writing related but nonetheless: If there is a very minor technicality in your query (eg. SIM card vs. memory chip), and in the book its actually the memory chip that they have to use, but SIM card flows 100 000 times better in the query -- bear in mind that this is the opening sentence of my query -- would it be okay to just say SIM card to make it sound better? Or would any potential agent reading the manuscript be annoyed that I misled them by saying SIM card when it's actually the memory chip? And reject the manuscript on the basis of that?

Thanks!

I think that most wireless companies in the US use the term SIM card. I've heard of a few that don't, but for the most part, that's the term. I don't know about the UK.

If, in the case of your story, SIM card and memory chip mean exactly the same thing, I don't see the problem. If they're a bit different, I'd go ahead and use memory chip and maybe reword the sentence it make it flow better. You wouldn't want to cause any problems by that.

Hope that helped.

I'm pretty sure you should have no problems by using the term SIM card, because that's the standard name for a memory chip inside a cell phone. In fact, I think you'd be much better off using SIM card, since that's what mostly all global cell phone companies call it.

Hope I helped!

It's called a SIM card. Haha.

Thanks for the help everyone! That really simplifies things a bit. As for gathering the courage to actually send the query... *gulp*