4,994
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 260:
Line 260: − :::I am wondering why conservapedia feels threatened by, say, british spelling of words vs american spellings. I like to use the british spellings because my computer says it is spelled incorrectly, yet i still love America. A paradox, isn't it? Still, perhaps we should choose the correct dialect in America to use on this cite. Otherwise, someone could point out the british spelling is used in some parts of America, and thus be considered "American," and therefore be able to use it. I personally am partial to the Mid-west.--[[User:Fpresjh|Fpresjh]] 10:01, 20 March 2007 (EDT)+ + + + + + + + +
Conservapedia talk:Commandments (view source)
Revision as of 20:38, March 20, 2007
, 20:38, March 20, 2007→Un-American Spelling
== Un-American Spelling ==
== Un-American Spelling ==
I am wondering why conservapedia feels threatened by, say, british spelling of words vs american spellings. I like to use the british spellings because my computer says it is spelled incorrectly, yet i still love America. A paradox, isn't it? Still, perhaps we should choose the correct dialect in America to use on this cite. Otherwise, someone could point out the british spelling is used in some parts of America, and thus be considered "American," and therefore be able to use it. I personally am partial to the Mid-west.--[[User:Fpresjh|Fpresjh]] 10:01, 20 March 2007 (EDT)
:Wikipedia is rather unusual in allowing and supporting a mix of usage styles. Most U. S. print publishers would specify a style manual calling out U. S. spelling. Most U. K. publishers would specify a style manual calling out British spelling. When a U. S. work is republished in the U. K. or vice versa, one of the publication steps would be copyediting the work to conform to local usage. A good example of this would be the first Harry Potter book, in which even the ''title'' was changed for the U. S. market. Conversely, I don't know if they would do this any more but I remembering reading a British edition of ''The Grapes of Wrath'' in which the Okies were talking about the difficulty of buying "a gallon a petrol" for their car.
:Wikipedia's policy is, of course, a very pragmatic response to the problem of producing an ''international'' English-language encyclopedia that is edited completely by unpaid volunteers who can't be ordered to use a uniform style and can't be assigned the job of copy-editing everything to a uniform style.
:My guess, and ''it's just a guess,'' is that something like this could have happened. Suppose one day a student typed in something like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_record Phonograph record], misinterpreted what happened, thought that Wikipedia had '''corrected''' what he had typed in, and told a teacher "No, the right name is 'Gramophone record,' Wikipedia says so," and the teacher overreacted.
:Is there a legitimate concern about (say) U. S. high school students using Wikipedia as a learning resource and thereby acquiring incorrect spelling habits? Let me put it this way: Conservapedia's emphasis on this point seems grotesquely exaggerated, but I, at least, see the point. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 16:38, 20 March 2007 (EDT)