Martin, My advice is don't "go rogue." Your company and your industry should have standards that must be maintained in a structured programming environment. I certainly have not done my own survey. Would such a survey as clearly indicate a preference for US spelling in the programming environment as your links imply? If so your choice is made. If you can't find roughly equal contervailing standards, you should not consider departing from the standard.
If there is a "standard" choice in your industry, what are the risks that the non-standard choice decreases acceptance of your company's product or causes users to have problems using it? As an American, I would have thought it would come down to which is your bigger market. I was quite surprised to see ESA requiring US spelling in programming. To me, that would imply your choice is made for you (unless there are a balancing bunch of standards that come out the other way. The SI Brochure notes that they use metre but some English-speaking countries (they mean us crazy Americans) spell it meter, and they don't make a big deal of it. So do Germans, Many Romance languages spell it metro, some Eastern European languages metr. The SI Brochure does NOT attempt to control spelling, they do control symbols, for meter/metre, it is "m." Even languages that don't have Roman alphabets agree on that. Pat: I have to take issue with the claim that British/American spelling differences keep me (or any American) from accessing literature from the Commonwealth. There may be a tiny speed bump in the learning curve, but it is perfectly readable. Some of it, I gloss over so easily that I have to look in Webster to remember whether I, personally, spell it defense of defence. There are a handful of words I have to look twice at, mostly where you have retained and we have simplified a diphthong ________________________________ From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association <[email protected]> Cc: USMA Metric Association <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, June 30, 2011 5:55:15 PM Subject: [USMA:50793] Re: Metres Versus Meters when Programming Dear Martin, Other than the article you have already referred to at: http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/Spelling_metre_or_meter.pdf I don't think that I can help you. When Noah Webster decided to corrupt the spelling of metre in the 1700s and early 1800s, he did so for his own commercial reasons as well as to meet the paranoia of the USA at that time. Webster's success with his deception is now so widespread that it has become part of the culture of the USA and, for over 200 years, it restricted the population of the USA from accessing many valuable references from all other English speaking nations — no matter how superior these "foreign" books might be. It was only a little lie at the time but it has grown mightily. I hope you don't mind but I have copied your email on to the USMA maillist for their comments — their thoughts are always valuable. Cheers, Pat Naughtin Geelong, Australia On 2011/07/01, at 04:02 , Martin Bromley wrote: Hello Pat, > >My company runs a site at http://www.degreedays.net/ that generates a >specialist >type of temperature data called degree days. We're in the process of building >an API (Application Programming Interface), which will give other programmers >a >way to get data out of our system without doing it manually through the >website >interface. > >In our API we need to give programmers access to several measurements of >distance, like the elevation of a weather station above sea level. I had >decided that we should use the metres unit for these measurements. That was >an >easy decision. > >What was not such an easy decision was deciding whether to spell it "metres" >or >"meters"... > >I'm guessing you're not a programmer so I shall give you just a little >background. If we use "metres" in our API, we're forcing all programmers that >use our API to type "metres" in various places throughout their code. And the >thing with programming is that US spellings are the norm. Programmers around >the >world are used to typing color instead of colour and center instead of centre. > It's like a standard of sorts. > >A couple of links that discuss this, for if you're interested: > >http://stackoverflow.com/questions/157807/gb-english-or-us-english >http://drabasablog.net/archives/post-133.html > >So the en_US convention for programming would encourage us to use "meters" in >our API (which is essentially a domain-specific language for programmers). >And >that is tempting. > >But we are providing a scientific kind of data, so it seems to me that it's >important to be scientific in our measurements. And "meters" just doesn't >feel >scientific. > >I came across your excellent PDF on the metres/meters debate and I found it >very >useful. It helped give me the confidence to make the decision to settle on >"metres", shunning the en_US convention for software programs. > >Many thanks for putting that information together and writing it in such a >compelling way. > >Fingers crossed we don't change our mind tomorrow or get shouted at by angry >Americans after we launch this API and they're wondering why on earth we spelt >meters "wrong". > >Please don't feel the need to reply to this... Through running our Degree >Days.net site I know what it's like when random strangers email one long tales >out of the blue, when one doesn't really have time to respond. I just wanted >to >say thanks. > >Best regards, > >Martin Bromley >http://www.degreedays.net/ > Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY PO Box 305 Belmont 3216, Geelong, Australia Phone: 61 3 5241 2008 Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
