We all know that spelling varies between Australia and some other countries, notably the USA. We write neighbour, they write neighbor; we write centre, they write center.
Which spelling you should use depends on who your readers are – if you want to attract Australian customers, use Australian spellings, and so on. If your domain ends with .au, then use Australian spelling and metric measurements even if you have an international audience – be proud of being Australian and use our conventions, especially as you have already announced your link to Australia.
As an Australian, I can read US spelling and understand it without too much effort (even when it annoys me on an Australian site!) and I believe that the Americans can cope with reading our spelling, too. I recently saw an Australian site with an explanation of the two spellings – to me, this implied that any Americans visiting the site were too stupid to understand ‘colour’ means ‘color’. That, or our spelling is somehow inferior and should be apologised for in case the Americans don’t like us.
Either way, it is not a good message to send and was a complete waste of the site owner’s time to prepare the table. So, be proud of our country and our conventions, and give others the courtesy that they are intelligent enough to respect and understand that.
Tags: american, apology, australian, country, pride
Thanks for this interesting article. As a Canadian, it is great to see people using International or Commonwealth English.
You’re welcome Calvin
Thank you for your comment, and encouraging Canadians to also use their own spelling conventions.
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I’m also Canadian, and I completely agree. Why should the rest of the english speaking world change their spelling to fit just one country?
Hi Barak, that is a great question! And my answer is that I won’t change to suit anyone else’s spelling ideas!
I know this post is over four years old, but I wanted to comment anyways. I’m American, and it drives me crazy when I see fellow Americans correcting the spelling of words like “apologise” and “colour” on the internet. Honestly, it’s embarrassing that people are that ignorant to believe that the internet consists of Americans only, or that everyone from other countries should spell their words the way we do. I just hope we don’t all come across as that stupid and arrogant.
Thanks for leaving a comment, Kari – happy to hear form you even if the post is 4 years old
Great to hear you are aware of the spelling differences and respect those and are fighting for those not stupid & arrogant 