Wiktionary talk:American or British Spelling

Intro to Policy discussion page

Previous discussions around this topic can be found at Wiktionary:Policy Think Tank on American or British Spelling/discussion archive.

This discussion page is intended for the freshest of discussions, and stale stuff should be archived every so often to Wiktionary:Policy Think Tank on American or British Spelling/discussion archive--Richardb 09:22, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

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Please Explain Changes

I've put up my inital thoughts for a Draft Policy in Development in order to provoke discussion. I guess you can either discuss that here before finding a consensus to change it, or, this being a Wiki, you can just go ahead and change it. But, if you do just go ahead and change it, please expalin to the rest of us the reasoning for any substantive changes you make.--Richardb 09:22, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Conventions

There exists a convention already to label commonwealth alternatives as "UK" to save some friggin' typing. American English likewise is not AmEng but simply "US". Canadian alternative are much rarer, as well as much less controversial; the convention to date has been to label them "Canadian".

What are people's thoughts on moving towards {{US}}, {{UK}} and {{Can}} to tag these? --Connel MacKenzie 22:52, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this "convention" is the right approach... Some people might try to look up Australian usage/spelling and all they'll find is UK, US. That's not really helpful. TomBrown 06:58, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Australia is very non-prescriptive about spelling. Though mostly UK spelling is preferred, either UK or US spelling is generally acceptable. So I cannot see any/much use for an "Aus" label for spelling. Only for usage.--Richardb 03:08, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

The convention exists as this is primarily (as someone wisely pointed out) as issue of American vs. everyone else. Therefore the tag UK encompasses all commonwealth variations. The order-of-magnitude-smaller variations between Australia and UK can quite simply (and are) labelled as such.

Got any examples of where an Aus spelling tag exists ????--Richardb 03:08, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Sure. Wikisearch says 369, e.g.: TFN RACWA crow eater sandgroper dunny sprinkles boardies Sydneyite sunnies wheelie bin sundry donk etc. --Connel MacKenzie 02:02, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

These are not Aus spelling variants. They are specific Australian "Words" or specific Australian Usages. Without actually checking them,not one of them shows a distinctly Australian spelling.--Richardb 14:41, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be missing the point: the US and UK words are different words. Not as obviously different, perhaps, but they are different. Saying that they are not is not NPOV! --Connel MacKenzie T C 15:39, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The Wiktionary policies pages, I thought, were intended to reflect practices, not dictate them. If so, then representing the "US" and "UK" convention is the correct thing to do, as that is how articles are currently labelled. In the very very few cases where this is not appropriate, that same convention is amended for whatever country the variation exists for.

My question is about using templates to reflect them (so that downstream the text "UK" could conceivably be replaced with "British Commonwealth varient form" or somesuch...(but that wording would be a separate flamewar.) --Connel MacKenzie 12:15, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Note: another reason why {{US}} and {{UK}} wouldn't suffice is that the UK itself is hardly unified (in the way the US is) when it comes to spelling. Indeed, many software developers are, in fact, arguing that there should be two British English spell-checkers, just as there are in Norwegian: 1) what most people use, and 2) what some recognized authority would use. In the case of British English, that authority would be Oxford, and they would find my spelling here perfect. But most Englishmen would peg me as an American (or Oxfordian because of the 'Z' in "recognize." --BrianD1 01:23, 17 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Do not use UK to denote spellings or words that are used all over the Commonwealth. This is like using Massachusetts to denote US English words. Do not use the term British Commonwealth because the Commonwealth is not British: it belongs equally to all member nations. And worst of all, do not use Chiefly British to denote spellings that are more common outside the island of Great Britain than they are inside. Try adding the English speaking populations of Canada, Australia, India, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa together, for a start. 210.86.118.15 07:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Wictionary should not be archaic. With the rapid rise of "tweeting" and the terrific volume of highly abbreviated texting going on, Wiktionary should also show the most common abbreviated spelling of longer words. In this vein, I would again direct attention to "capitl inglish". It Usis capitls N u difrnt wA. thus inglish wrdz R spLd az thA sownd. an avrAg pAg iz tIpt with 15% fUr cairictrs. for u mas uv rImz ritn N capitl inglish sE greensuit.org.