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[wiki] Default version of English should be what?
Dean, the creator, was (and still is, as far as I know) Canadian. Txp users are international (which is about as close as Americans come). All English originally came from the UK (if you want to get philosophical).
To my mind, that means a default version of English would have an international flavor. But while International English is admirable for it’s aims toward a English neutrality, there are no actual standards in that direction. Thus, I think the next best thing is something more European-oriented, and in that respect probably British English is the right choice. So “customization” to us yanks would be spelled “customisation”, and “color” would be “colour”, etc.
Thoughts? (Make them count because this wil lead editorial direction.)
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Re: [wiki] Default version of English should be what?
Sounds like EN-GB would be most appropriate, considering original authorship and the overwhelming number of Europeans who use TXP.
You’d potentially have a lot of people contributing in EN-US though. It’s not easy for us to switch over to, or even recall accurately, the canon of EN-GB wordage.
So if I ever vandalize Textbook with something like “for example, if gray is your favorite color,” apologies in advance.
Last edited by maruchan (2010-12-16 17:15:30)
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Re: [wiki] Default version of English should be what?
maruchan wrote:
You’d potentially have a lot of people contributing in EN-US though. It’s not easy for us to switch over to, or even recall accurately, the canon of EN-GB wordage.
That’s expected to a certain extent. I’m sure the wiki if full of “z” uses, and many by my own hand. There’s a hodge-podge of uses, most likely, so I’m starting an editorial style guide to help begin curtailing inconsistencies and so forth before they happen.
It’s more than just default language, though. I stumble across all kinds of problems, like using the first-person, making assumptions about from where a reader has been prior to the current page, an array of styles and tone, etc.
We’re never going to get people to write perfectly on each contribution, and that’s okay, but we want to encourage better efforts when they try, and with a few sensible guidelines, they might indeed like trying.
This editorial part of this style guide could be adopted at the .com level, theoretically. This would be the case in a comprehensive content strategy.
EN-GB
This brings up a different consideration, actually. There are two parts to any good style guide, the editorial part (which is mostly about the content as humans will see it), and the technical part (which describes how to treat content under the surface…the machine-readable version).
“en-GB” is a technical consideration about what language to define in the web content for the sake of device handling (browser, etc.). In this case the “GB” is a regional declaration which devices will take to mean the website is in the UK, which it’s really not (servers are either the Netherlands or California, I forget which). That’s not exactly the same aim as using British English to guide editing.
My inclination here would be to set language in the web templates as just “en”, without any regional specification. Devices will then treat content a bit more “internationally”, even though copy, for humans sake, follows a more specific convention.
I’m skeptical to get into the technical aspects of a style guide to any great degree, but there will be some things to mention. For example how to use certain selectors in the wiki that already define presentational aspects of certain content, collaboration flags, etc.
Initially, the style guide will focus on the editorial side of things.
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