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Is sphelling up the creak without a piddle on blogs?

Is sphelling up the creak without a piddle on blogs?

An interesting discussion at Slashdot on the topic of the standards of English being utilized in the tech community. Does this apply to blogs? From experience I know that my own grammar and spelling sometimes suffers due to the nature of blogging itself, mainly that writing in the first person dictates a form of informal grammatical use that is representative of conversation as opposed to the more formal language that writing in the third person dictates as necessary. To confuse matters further my own ability to spell is complicated further by the differences in US and International (UK) English. For example in this post I used “z” in utilized where as I would use “s” (as in utilised) when writing normally, and unfortunately this mixture of both styles complicates matters further. Is the grammar and pretext of the English language under threat in the blogosphere, or is the development of the informal conversational style that is typical of many blogs merely representative of the rich diversity and development of written English? share your thoughts.

View Comments (3)
  • Duncan, Oxford University supports the “ize” convention rather than “ise”. Interestingly most published books in the UK use “ize” too, but newspapers and popular spelling don’t. The OUP points out that “ize” goes back in English to the 16th century, so is more “historical” than “ise”. I always use “ize” because it brings British and American English closer. Let’s face it, the net will see American English win out in few decades anyway.

  • John
    Austalian English uses the “ise” convention which was essentially UK English, so I’m suprised that “ize” is recognised this way. But you are right though, US English will probably win out, only because its the popular choice of English in Asia, I mean I cant remember the last time I bought a gizmodo that actually had Colour spelt the right way on the box, its always Color.

  • Sure, it’s a mixed bag. I use colour too and all the other British usages. But Oxford says that “ize” is the old British usage, so make what you will of that. Even Inspector Morse told off Sgt Lewis for using “ise” … it’s illiterate, he said. Rest my case :-)

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