Difference between us and international english Framemaker

[Steve Rickaby]

At 08:49 -0800 14/12/06, Gillian Flato wrote:

>This brings up a topic that will affect us soon. My company just merged with a company on England. They write their manuals the English way (i.e. colour, theatre etc.) and we write the American way (color, theater). In 2007, I will be working on a project with them so the docset will be split up between their local tech writer and me.

I assume you mean 'in England'. I know we're smaller than you, but we're bigger than just a rock in the Atlantic ;-)

>So the question is, which English do we standardize on?

And the answer is... whichever you prefer. It's a corporate policy-level issue, but in most cases it's US English that wins out.

As a UK-based tech author, I very frequently have to work in US English, both for US clients and for UK publishers who have standardised on US English for the international market. I think you'd find that any competent tech author should be conversant with this - although I have to look up the punctuation rules every time. Make sure your author realises that it's not just spelling: word usage, punctuation, grammar and idiom are involved too. I'm sure there are good reference works on the subject.

One thing to be wary of, if we're talking about FrameMaker: I've found that the US English dictionary is sometimes a little too lax. For example, it accepts both 'modelling' and 'modeling'. Or mine does, anyway.

-- 
Steve