British and American spelling

It was George Bernard Shaw who said that Britain and America were “divided by a common language”, and this is brought home quite forcibly when we look at our rules of spelling! 

In the UK, the English language has evolved over many centuries, and the way we spell our words today is not always been how our ancestors would have done so.  Emigrants to the New World took the English language with them in the state that it was at the time, and there has been a certain degree of divergence since then, although there are many examples that show that it is the British spelling that has changed in the meantime, not the American.

There have also been several deliberate attempts at spelling reform in the United States, most notably by Noah Webster of dictionary fame, and Melville Dewey, who devised the Dewew Decimal Classification for libraries and preferred “catalog” to “catalogue”.  Spelling reforms have also been proposed in the UK, but with much less success. However, the constant cross-fertilisation supplied by American books, journals and (especially) web-based materials has led many British people to accept American spellings in daily use.

So what are the differences?  One that is now becoming very blurred is “-ise” and “-ize” as a word ending.  I would always prefer to see “recognise” rather than “recognize”, as I regard “-ize” as an Americanism, but some British dictionaries now give “recognize” as the preferred form.  However, this “rule” – if it is a rule – only applies to words of two or more syllables – for example, don’t confuse “prise” and “prize”, which are words with entirely different meanings.

One very clear difference is the American omission of the “u” in “-our” word endings.  So whereas a Brit would write “neighbour”, “harbour” and “colour”, an American would write “neighbor”, “harbor” and “color”.  The important thing to remember here is not to use both forms of spelling in the same document – decide which spelling code to adopt and stick with it.

There are some examples where spelling reform has led to confusions that do not occur in British English.  For instance, a floor of a building is a “storey” in Britain but a “story” in the USA.  However, a “story” is also a tale that is told, on both sides of the Pond.  In the plural, both “storeys” and “stories” are correct in the UK, depending on the context.

Another example is “kerb” and “curb”.  If you hold something back, you curb it. If that something is the edge of a pavement (or “sidewalk” to an American), a Brit will do so with a “kerb”, but in American English “curb” is used for both meanings, and the special meaning of “kerb” has been lost.

I am not saying that one way of spelling is correct and the other is wrong, only that these  differences exist and it is important to be aware of them, so that when writing in English you are consistent.  However, as I said above, things are not completely cut and dried and you can be forgiven for not getting it right every time – very few native-born writers of British English do so anyway!

Feel free to offer your comments on this or any other post in this blog.  For more help with your written English, have a look at my website, www.welfordwrites.co.uk and contact me if you need a longer piece of work corrected or edited. 

Through the door

I am always careful about responding to door-to-door appeals for used clothing, as some of the people involved are criminals who have absolutely no intention of sending the donated clothes to needy people.  One giveaway is often the language used in the leaflets they distribute.  For example, this week the following was on a leaflet that landed on the doormat:

XXX is a collection company who provides people in need Eastern Eurpoean countries with affordable clothes for them and their families it provides jobs in third Eastern Eurpoean countries for those sorting the clothes for distribution. It also provides business for UK export transport companies as well as creating employment in the UK factories grading the clothes and those people collecting the bags door to door.

There are some obvious mistakes here, such as the misspelling of “European” and the lack of a sentence break in the second line.  It is not at all clear what is meant by “third Eastern Eurpoean countries”.  The last sentence runs away with itself, and actually says that the company creates the people who do the collecting!

I don’t want to encourage dubious operators by pointing out how they can deceive more people, but, on the other hand, legitimate charity workers would be trusted more if they sorted out the grammar and phrasing of their leaflets!

If you need help with writing your advertising material, you should pay a visit to www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Shades of meaning

Here is an example of a piece of text that I edited recently, from an article written by an academic in Taiwan:

“… feminists had been demanding the end to discrimination and suppression on women in public and private arenas …”

I decided that several changes were needed, mainly because I was not happy with the use of “on” in the implied phrase “discrimination on women”.  It is also not quite the right preposition to use with “suppression”.  I therefore rewrote the text as :

“…feminists had been demanding an end to women’s discimination against and suppression of in both public and private arenas…”  (there are a couple of other minor changes as well)

This version is correct grammatically, but the customer queried it, and I’m not surprised!  To be honest, it’s a bit clumsy.  I therefore had second thoughts and came up with:

“…feminists had been demanding the end of discrimination against women in both public and private arenas…”

 This reads much better and, I would claim, says more by saying less.  I had thought about using the phrase “women’s discrimination and suppression”, but the problem then is that it could be taken to read that it was the women who were doing the discriminating!  However, as suppression is a form of discrimination, do you need both in the sentence?

What this example shows is that English allows you to express subtle shades of meaning, and how you position words next to each can change your meaning in ways that you might not have expected when you wrote them originally.

If you don’t agree with the above, or would like to ask me about a similar problem, please add a comment.  If you have a longer piece of work that you would like to me to look at, I suggest you try my website at www.welfordwrites.co.uk

Off we go!

I’ve not done this before, so please bear with me!

My name’s Welford (my surname, that is) and I write.  The sort of writing I do is a bit specific, and I’ll explain it as I go along.

It’s all about using the English language in the most effective way.  I help people to do this by taking their text and editing it, by which I mean sorting out all their mistakes in grammar, phrasing, and the rest.  In future posts I’ll show you some examples, and invite you to contact me with problems you might have.

I’ll help you for nothing if I can, but this is also how I make my living, so if you have something a bit more extensive you’ll have to try my website (www.welfordwrites.co.uk) and we’ll take it from there.

OK – that’s post number 1.  Time for lunch!