Aussie verses U S A Spelling.

In my original Blog, “Spellinmg and Othe rMistakes”, I mentioned a recent spelling mistake and thanked the person who corrected me and asked for future corrections when appropriate. Which I soon received. However most, but not all (See previous blog - Cursory Spell-Check verses the Real Thing.) were not really English spelling mistakes but only wrong from an American English viewpoint. Following is the comment I received from one of my American friends. He wrote: “Okay, I'm politely and courteously pointing out the following mistakes: “I” should be “it”, “reversed” should be “reversed”, “damming” should be “damning”, and “perpetrated” should probably be “perpetuated.”

So I (I hope) politely responded that most of the mistakes were not in fact mistakes but variances between English and American English.

However, thinking about the difference in spelling between American and Non American English does raise the issue of where and when to use either.

Do I remain obdurately Australian and write only in Australian English? Or do I go all the way the other way and use just the American spelling? Or better yet, choose my language to my main target audience.

I like to think that I have chosen the latter step as, so far at least, most of my known reading audience, seem to be non-American and have no problem with my English. Of course if I were to write to a mainly American audience, then I would happily converse in the language that they are more familiar with.

What about you now? Do you know what is the common denomination between you and your audience/market? And are you aiming for that or simply and maybe even arrogantly just going your own sweet way? Well I have had my say now, what say you? And in what language?