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Actually, two of these things -- "thru" and turning nouns into verbs --
bother me as an American, because they seem like just plain corruptions
of the language, rather than legitimate usage differences.
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas -dot- Burke -at- bbc -dot- co -dot- uk [mailto:Thomas -dot- Burke -at- bbc -dot- co -dot- uk]
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 11:21 AM
Subject: Re: UK friendly?
I must start my reply by saying that this is NOT a rant against any
north american or how they write. It is just a fair represnetation of my
feelings based on my experience with Uk and European Audiences.
Again, it all depends on the audience, specifically the literacy and
exposure to the terms and phrases you are using.
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.
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