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Subject:RE: Dialogue or dialog? From:Krista Van Laan <KVanlaan -at- verisign -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 17 Nov 2000 18:46:22 -0800
Grace Felder wrote:
> However, the software developer seems to think they should be called
> 'dialog' boxes because that is the correct way to spell it in 'programmer
> speak'.
> I thought it was simply a matter of US people spelling it 'dialog' and UK
> people spelling it 'dialogue', I had never heard of a 'programmers' way of
> spelling something.
> Who is right or is a matter of opinion?
It's a matter of opinion that seems to be widespread.
When I worked for Nokia in Finland, the convention was to use British
English
for all our writing *except* in the case of software. Someone said that it
was
because most software was developed in the US, so it was proper to call its
elements
by American names. I also saw that programmers from all parts of the world
did
use American terminology and spelling when developing SW, so there is a
"programmers'
way" of spelling. So we could conceivably write about
a "dialogue" between two people and a "dialog" box, within the same
document.
There were a few other words like this which I don't remember right now.
Krista
================================================
Krista Van Laan
Documentation Manager
VeriSign, Inc. http://www.verisign.com
1350 Charleston Road Mountain View, CA 94043
tel: (650) 429-5158 fax: (650) 961-7300
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