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Bug 6763 - Inconsistent use of American and British English
Summary: Inconsistent use of American and British English
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/...
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-04-03 08:15 UTC by Jens O. Meiert
Modified: 2010-10-04 13:58 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

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Description Jens O. Meiert 2009-04-03 08:15:57 UTC
(Apologies for not searching W3C Bugzilla for duplicates.)

The spec draft currently uses both American and British English. While I’m not a 100 % sure if W3C documents aren’t and shouldn’t be usually written in American English anyway, making this consistent would definitely be helpful.

In case we’d like to default to American English, here’s a list of words in the spec that seem to be of British origin:

* behaviour
* categorise/categorised
* colour/coloured
* emphasised
* favour
* favourite
* flavours
* honour
* optimise
* recognise/recognised
* serialise/serialisation
* tokeniser
Comment 1 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 13:17:32 UTC
This bug predates the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.

If you are satisfied with the resolution of this bug, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

This bug is now being moved to VERIFIED. Please respond within two weeks. If this bug is not closed, reopened or escalated within two weeks, it may be marked as NoReply and will no longer be considered a pending comment.
Comment 2 Jens O. Meiert 2010-03-14 16:40:31 UTC
There is still a range of language inconsistencies in the spec. A comment could help clarifying whether that’s intended or not (and if intended, why). Reopening.
Comment 3 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 18:01:14 UTC
As a quick check, I found instances of both "behavior" and "behaviour" in the current editor's draft.
Comment 4 Ian 'Hixie' Hickson 2010-03-31 08:45:29 UTC
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Accepted
Change Description: see diff given below
Rationale: Concurred with reporter's comments.

The spec prose is supposed to be American English, but I often forget myself and write in British English. Please do let me know if I missed anything. (Note that many examples are explicitly in British English and so not in error. Similarly most of the comments in the spec source are intentionally in British English.)
Comment 5 contributor 2010-03-31 08:46:57 UTC
Checked in as WHATWG revision r4918.
Check-in comment: americanization
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=4917&to=4918