08 February 2006

Orthography Matters

I've been meaning to clear this up for some time now: I get a fair number of inquiries to the effect of, "Hey, how come you write "honour" and "colour" and "criticise" and all that Brit-type stuff when you're a damn American?"

Well, if you're thinking it's because I'm a pretentious ponce, you may be half-right (at least), but there's actually a solid reason behind it as well. Actually, I don't always write Brit-style; if you look back through the archives, you'll find entries where everything is written in good old-fashioned American.

The deal is: because I occasionally write for hire in both Britain and American (and because I'm a pretentious ponce), I decided that I'd practise being bilingual by writing in the vernacular of whatever country I'm currently located in. Don't ask me what happens if I ever find myself blogging from a country where they don't speak some form of English. Esperanto, maybe.

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