Re: UK/US English - What to do?

[Matt Ion <soundy -at- SOUNDY -dot- ORG>]

On Fri, 7 May 1999 16:38:04 -0500, Scott Browne wrote:

>Because this product will be marketed to an American audience, should the
>docs use US English spellings, or should it use the same UK English
>spellings which the user will actually see on the interface?

I'd stick with the UK English throughout - not just for the dialogs, but
wherever there's a difference.  US readers aren't THAT dense (this from a
Canadian :) that they won't understand it, and if you wander between the
two versions (UK English for dialog info, US English elsewhere) it's
simply going to look haphazard and amateurish.

The only consideration you might want to make is a definition of any
significant terms that differ between the two variations of English.  For
example, one British publisher produces owner-oriented shop manuals for
cars, and North America is probably their largest market.  At the
beginning of each book, they include a cross-reference of terms: the
"hood" of a car in the US is called the "bonnet" in the UK; what Americans
call the "trunk", Brits call the "boot"; we put "gas" in our cars, while
they use "petrol".  It appears that they do this because, while most terms
in the books I have are North Americanized, there are a few UK terms that
slip through... and I have one book that's obviously the UK version
(occupational hazard of living in one of the Colonies, I guess).


 Your friend and mine,
 Matt
 <All standard disclaimers apply>
 "Reality is in alpha test on protoype hardware."
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