On 6/9/06, Death Phoenix originaldeathphoenix@gmail.com wrote:
*sigh* People pursuing BE and AE should see what it's like to be a writer who has to write a certain way because our style guide says so. Our company writes in AE, while I personally dislike AE and prefer to write in BE as much as possible. I write in AE in my company because I'd likely get fired if I didn't.
I am in that exact same situation - I'm employed to write in AmE, although AusE (or even BE) is my preference. It's confusing, and mostly manifests itself with words like "behavio[u]r", and occasionally "level[l]ed" etc.
I prefer to to write in BE, but when I see people trying to convert American articles to BE, such as [[Special Activities Division]], it annoys me greatly. Same with British articles to AE (such as [[Harry Potter]]). This also applies to articles that could be written in either AE or BE, but were first written in one form, and people come to convert it over. I wish I could apply a category or template to indicate that the article is written in AE, and please piss off with the BE conversions (and vice versa).
I tend to think conversions are a kind of "noise" that should be justified by a considerable contirbution. A 20 paragraph article that becomes a 25 paragraph article accompanied by a conversion from BE to AE seems like a good deal. A conversion with no other redeeming features tends to grate, however.
Steve