So... British English or American English?
I write a lot online, on my blog, in emails, on various networking sites, and for tech sites like GigaOM and ZDNet.
In my own — personal — writing, I try to write in the English I was taught; British English. In formal pieces for GigaOM et al I try to write in the English of the country in which those sites are based; American English.
I must admit that it's actually becoming harder and harder to remember what is correct where. Any word with a 'u' in it is obviously British English. Any mention of 'pants' in polite company is obviously American. Pavements must be watched with care. But those 'z's and 's's are a constant torment. And then there's odd concepts... like 'fortnight.' Increasingly, I find words and phraseology homogenis(z)ing oddly, creating a mid-Atlantic munge that typically ends up including words likely to grate for both US and UK audiences.
All of which leads to the question. I see both British and American English all day, every day. I am (generally) comfortable with both, although 'aluminum' will bug me for ever and ever. I would imagine that most internationally engaged British readers are similar; we are surrounded by American English, and are generally comfortable accepting most of its differences to the language we were taught.
What about Americans? Does British English appear odd/quaint/annoying/wrong... or do you generally just read it quite happily?
And what about the rest of the world? When you read my British or American English on a site like GigaOM, do you wish for a UK spelling, an American spelling, either one so long as it's consistent, or do you simply neither notice nor care?
I'll probably keep writing the big pieces for places like GigaOM in their American English. That feels like the right thing to do. It's the shorter pieces — the Today in Infrastructure, and the Daily Links — where I find myself falling back into spellings with which I am instinctively comfortable. Is this a bad thing? Should I stop that, and remind myself — forcefully — to write like an American?
I honestly welcome your thoughts...
