Choosing the right word: Guidelines for our global audience

[Janice Gelb]

Kate Wilcox wrote:
> 
> I've always loved Mark Twain's advice to "use the right word and not its
> second cousin." But now that I'm working for a company with a
> distributed workforce (writers in the US and India) and a global
> audience, I'm starting to question which words are right.
> 
> This goes beyond the typical spelling differences (color vs. colour) and
> clear-cut differences in meanings [jumper (one that jumps) vs. jumper
> (dress)]. I'm talking about common English words that have different
> connotations to different readers and writers. [snip]
> 

Internationalizing/localizing product documentation
is always tricky. The aim is to write in a way that
is as neutral and universally understood as you can
get, as you note. If you can manage to rephrase
wording that you know is problematic, so much the
better, obviously.

For example, this case:
 >
 > US: Make sure you understand the requirements before you begin.
 >
 > India: Make sure you appreciate the requirements before you begin.
 >
 > Issue: The Indian writer considered "understand" to be rude. The US
 > writer considered "appreciate," and its connotation of recognizing
 > quality, to be too broad.
 >

Perhaps you could rephrase as:

"Make sure you are aware of the requirements
before you begin."

However, in other cases, you have to come down off
the fence on one side or the other (as with your
"team is/team are" example). Punctuation is
another area that has to be either/or.

In our case, our style guide is reviewed by our
localization group and we have a whole chapter
giving advice about writing for an international
audience.  Regarding English for English speakers,
though, our company is based in America and our
primary English-speaking audience is American as
well. When these types of questions first arose,
we discussed it and ended up adding a note to our
style guide specifically saying that our standard
was American English. (That way, at least individual
editors and managers can point to that statement in
the style guide as a corporate standard when accused
of being culturally insensitive :-> )

-- Janice

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