Re: [OT] British vs. American English

[consul tores <consultores1@gmail.com>]

2011/10/2 Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>:
> 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

Nop, it seems incorrect:

The center of the earth.
The Bachellors centre.