Re: UK friendly?

Subject: Re: UK friendly?
From: "T.W. Smith" <techwordsmith -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:39:25 -0400


Well, -ize/-ise is just a regional spelling thing, right? Really,
there's nout to get worked up about there.

"Thru" is incorrect in U.S. technical documentation. In informal
communiction, it is fine and there's no reason it should bother you.

The nominalization thing is, well, probably incorrect for the U.S. as
well, and I agree it can be as annoying as that extra "tate" on
"orient" <g>.

The date thing is difficult. For cross-cultural docs, I recommend
spelling out the month, though yyyymmdd helps me rank (note, not
prioritize <g>) memos and files on my PC better than putting the year
last.

All of that is not to mention the candy/sweets things, M&Ms =
Smarties, Milky Way = Mars Bar, Twix = uuummmm Twix <g>, LifeSavers =
almost-but-not-quite Polos.

And, has anyone mentioned the ed/t thing (learned/learnt)?

Next ....

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004 22:37:12 -0400 (EDT), diotima <diotima -at- myway -dot- com> wrote:
>
what bugs you about american documentationize is that it's not british
documentationize.
-diotima
>
> thomas wrote:
> >Things that bug me about American documentation are:
> -ize instead of ise.
> thru instead of through, in fact I'd love it if you never use 'thru' when
describing dates such as; "Sept. 1 thru Sept. 15" and would much more
> prefer it if it was stated along the lines of 'From 1st Sept. to 15th
> Sept. inclusive"
> Dates, this is difficult AND is dependant on the audience exposure to
> computers (after all, using MS products for a while the user becomes aware
> of checking the date format) but in general the UK uses DD/MM/YY(YY) or
> DD-Month (short) name-YYYY. There is an ISO standard date format of (I
> think) YYYY-MM-DD.
> And Finally, The tendency to turn ever noun into a verb by adding 'ize' or
> even 'ise'.
> I'll duck from the 'friendly fire' now.


======
T.

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Re: UK friendly?: From: diotima

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