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Comment by new_here | Hacker News Reader

I was raised to use British English spelling. Honestly, without any offence intended, whenever I see words like 'color', 'organize', 'oriented' and so on my mind sees it as a lazy (for lack of a better word) interpretation of the original word's spelling that has evolved in the US. I don't think the content has any less merit because of it, the authors are following the American convention. Just saying that because I'm curious as to what American's think when they read British spelling?

Also, whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America so they have complete right to spell it however they damn well please.

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> whenever I write CSS and type 'color', I think, this was developed in America

Well just so you know, it was mainly developed on the Franco-Swiss border (at CERN) by Norwegian, Dutch and English citizens.

The largest role of America in CSS is influencing the spelling because of its cultural weight, but not developing the language.

Interesting, thanks for the correction!

-ize is correct in British English as well; if anything it is more "original" as it comes from the Greek -izo (iota, zeta, omega), which is the origin of the suffix. In fact Oxford English Dictionary (OED) spelling, and the Hart's Rules guide, are for organize, not for organise. (On the other hand, analyze is American while analyse is British.)

TIL, thanks for the clarification!

I usually stick to the British spelling as well, but I also love variety and I wish there were more "written dialects" of English that are widely accepted. I hate it when people react to different ways of talking or writing as if the other person was a child who hasn't learned the _proper_ way of doing things yet. As to the counter-argument of normalizing language use for the sake of the maximum number of people being able to easily understand each other: I think this argument underestimates peoples' capacity to communicate even when they can't understand 100% of the references or language, and it underestimates the negative effect an inflexible language has on the culture.

In some ways, it's a dilemma of where to draw the line between "this is a person who hasn't experienced enough language and therefore is deficient in its use" and between "this is a person who's language has adapted to his micro-cultural/social/etc. context".

I could go on and on about this. I think it's a fascinating, relevant subject.

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