RE: Us Vs UK English, How Relevant?

["R. Weisbloom" <rweisbloom -at- sympatico -dot- ca>]

That goes for Canada also. Most of us are used to "American," when
reading but when writing we use "The Queen's English."
I remember when I was in London a shop had a sign: "English spoken,
American Understood"
Robert Weisbloom
Montreal, Canada


 


Eddy asked:

Has any reader/user actually faced a problem that was caused because
they did not understand a documented term, purely because of the dialect
(UK/US
English) used?

Elizabeth replied:

Yes. It was minor. I was retrofitting a European Computer Driving
License online course for the US market (so they could drive a computer
when they came to Europe on holiday, of course), and terrible confusion
arose over paper sizes. I can't remember the details, but it took about
a day of back-and-forthing before we figured out what the text should
say in US English. And it wasn't that the original text was poorly
written (it wasn't). 

Cheque/check is an issue if you're going from US to Europe. If people
who learned 'cheque' see 'check' where they know they should see
'cheque', they become very confused. And if you're wondering, I
purposely wrote the previous sentence that way. I like it :-)Many people
today understand lots of US English because of Sky television. But
'nappy' and 'daipy' (sp?) sound different; 'cheque' and 'check' don't.

Elizabeth OShea
Documentation
Virtual Access (Irl) Ltd.
Unit 18
Trinity Enterprise Centre
Pearse Street
Dublin 2
Ireland
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