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


More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list