Re: UK friendly?

[Thomas -dot- Burke -at- bbc -dot- co -dot- uk]

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.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl

WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT: New! Document review system for Word and FrameMaker
authors. Automatic browser-based drafts with unlimited reviewers. Full
online discussions -- no Web server needed! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l 

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.