en-GB-oxford LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM
Michael Everson
everson at evertype.com
Sun Jun 15 21:34:44 CEST 2003
Yes, the OED has citations which include all the possible spellings.
American dictionaries do too. ("colour, Brit. var. of color"). The
point is that in the world of tagged English that we live in today,
one has a choice of "British English" (colour, tyre, civilise) or "US
English" (color, tire, civilize). While a variety of British English,
the OED prefers civilize to civilise. This editorial preference is
explicitly stated and followed in Oxford dictionaries.
"-ize" and "-ization" are *highly* productive suffixes, and it is a
real pain to have to choose between two orthographic practices for
all sorts of other spellings and and have to have a rake of custom
spelling dictionaries for each application....
Being able to tag text for Oxford spelling is the first stage of
getting support for such spell-check dictionaries.
I would support the provision of tags for other spellings for English
where necessary, by the way, but I am not aware of significant
differences in other varieties. Certainly nothing like this "-ize"
issue.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
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