Pat Naugtin, 17 September 2005: >... The difference in spelling is a very important issue for > those of us who write, who edit, and who publish. Every word > of every document that is intended or might even be potentially > used in both a 'metre' market and a 'meter' market has to be > carefully checked word-by-word to determine the context and > to consider if it is appropriate in each individual context.
This surprises me, coming from you Pat. Not that two versions of English complicate editing, but that you consider that reason for telling several hundred million people to change thier language. Why not just say the whole world should switch to Esperanto, and make an editor's job really easy? Like it or not, the -re spelling is not a part of American English, while the -er spelling is. Same with -our and -or (colour, color). And as I pointed out, 69% of English speakers use the American version, so why push American English to be the one to change? If everyone used "meter" your editing problems would disappear just as quickly as if everyone used "metre." If our goal is to metricate America, we do not speed up the process by adding unnecessary tasks to the job. Jim Elwell
