Re: [OT] British vs. American English
On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 06:20:57 -0400 (EDT), Nuno Magalhães wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 06:22, Doug <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> wrote:
>> (That's the American placement of the comma before the close-quote; the
>> Brits do it opposite.)
>
> I could never understand that, seems like wrong nesting/closing of
> html tags to me.
>
When writing non-technical prose, I put the punctuation inside the
quotation marks, in accordance with accepted writing style in the
US. But in technical writing, such as when quoting a command that
must be typed at the command line, I put the punctuation outside
the quotation marks, lest someone type the comma (or whatever)
as part of the command. Personally, I think the British convention
makes more sense in this case.
> i still get quirky about color instead of colour or centre vs center
> (which is which btw?).
Color is the American spelling. Colour is the British spelling.
It's the same word with the same meaning. Similarly, center is the
American spelling and centre is the British spelling. Same word,
same meaning. How the spelling differences came about I have no
idea. In the early days of English, there was no standardized
spelling. I suspect that different national bodies convened to
decide on standardized spelling, and the two organizations occasionally
picked different standard spellings for the same word. That's why
there are separate spelling dictionaries for British English and
American English.
--
.''`. Stephen Powell
: :' :
`. `'`
`-
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