The Vast Cornfields of Canada : DerekAllard.com

The Vast Cornfields of Canada

February 11^th, 2007

In the last ten days I've gotten three separate emails from people about something that, I have to admit, really surprised me. They were concerned about my use of the words "colour" (two emails on this one) and "favourite" (this one appeared in my post on Code Igniter Wiki resources). And honestly, "concerned" is probably a good choice of words. I've written back to 2 of them with a brief explanation - but since 1 of the notes came from my contact form with an obviously fake email, I couldn't respond directly to the writer. I also don't mind quoting a few lines here.

...if you're trying to show people professional resources, maybe you should use the accepted international spelling don't you think?...

Go ahead, read that again, I needed to read it three time before it made sense. Look, I have absolutely NO problem with how you choose to spell colour, or favourite, or centre, but please, please, please don't think that the rest of the planet should spell it like that simply because you want to.

Finally, maybe there was a time when people didn't recognize that some words are spelled differently in other countries (I'm Canadian), but I don't think its been in my lifetime, so lighten up - there are SO many other things you could criticize me for anyways.

This entry was made on February 11^th, 2007 @ 9:09 and filed into Noteworthy.

Comments

Dom wrote on February 11^th, 2007 @ 9:28

Yes, it does seem somewhat petty to complain about that.

Is there such a thing as an accepted International spelling?

Wikipedia offers a breakdown. Most places seem to adopt the British (Commonwealth) spelling variants.

Yannick wrote on February 11^th, 2007 @ 10:50

That’s a good one. I spell those words the same way you do Derek. :)

John wrote on February 12^th, 2007 @ 1:06

Sometimes when you install an application you get an option of "International English"

Lord knows what that means though! Spell it all like us Brits if you ask me.

Brad Touesnard wrote on February 12^th, 2007 @ 9:31

We were chatting over some drinks last week at the Web Directions North conference and one guy leans over and whispers to me, "I have no idea how far a kilometer is." He grew up in Vegas.

Then we had a whole conversation about metric vs. standard, etc. Interesting.

Pradesh wrote on February 13^th, 2007 @ 19:51

You tell’em Derek.

Colour should be spelt the way the Queen speaks it.

Glad to know that Canada is also an old British colony like South Africa. How come you guys don’t play rugby or cricket.

Now, can we form a lobby group to force the hand of the W3 group so that we can spell colour our way in HTML docs as well.

Derek wrote on February 14^th, 2007 @ 1:25

Ha ha. I wasn’t trying to make any political statements, I think the tone of "accepted international" just bugged me… I must have missed that memo.

@Brad: um… kilo-meter… what’s that? ;)

Joeles wrote on February 18^th, 2007 @ 11:05

You’ve got to love the "we’re the center of the world" attitude of us Americans. haha It’s really quite sad that some people are just clueless that the rest of the world doesn’t do everything the same as us. That being said, when are you guys finally going to switch from metric to "standard"? j/k ;)

Derek wrote on February 18^th, 2007 @ 11:14

Joel. You trying to get me in trouble? :)

I *like* America, and Americans, it was just this one particular email that got to me.

And um… don’t you mean "centre of the world" [ducks!]

Joeles wrote on February 18^th, 2007 @ 11:38

haha I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t love Americans. I was poking fun at American’s widespread delusion that we are the center, err "centre" of the world.

Tido wrote on February 18^th, 2007 @ 13:20

Yeah, that’s pretty silly. I’m an American and never once cared if someone spelled color "colour". Both are correct in my opinion and it’s hard to believe someone wanted to write you to criticize something so trivial. On a side note, I wish the US would switch to metric as well. We’re a fantastic country, but that doesn’t me we’re doing everything the best way.

Darren wrote on February 21^st, 2007 @ 0:07

"...if you’re trying to show people professional resources, maybe you should use the accepted international spelling don’t you think?..."

hmmmm and what is this supposed to be? Color(american)? or Colour(UK, Canada, rest of Europe, Australia, New Zealand)?

Ankur wrote on February 26^th, 2007 @ 13:01

Hmmmm…I like colour better, even though when I code in css it is color however Colour is my particular choice of spelling. haha even labour, neighbour, flavour, honour and I can go on all day haha =)...100% Canadian!

Dalif wrote on March 02^nd, 2007 @ 4:30

haha.. funnily, when I stumbled upon your website today, the first post I read, had the word colour in it. And, because I grew up in the united states some, and have adapted their way of spelling and talking, it stomped me. I just figured you migth be British. Now I know you’re Canadian.

People who think your work will lack quality because of how you spell a word (as long as it’s right I mean), are probably not capable of much themselves :)

DerekAllard.com : CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, and the World of Web Design

The Vast Cornfields of Canada

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