Steve Bennett wrote:
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.
As a user of Canadian English I find it best to have a compromise hybrid where some words will have an affinity to AmE and others to BrE, although any single word should be spelled consistently throughout an article. Insisting on all American or British spelling is really just another form of POV pushing.
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