User talk:Truth About Spelling

Standard English

I'm not going to argue with you on the definition of Standard English. Five minutes in any school in any foreign country would convince you, but who cares, it's just Wikipedia, it would most likely get reverted by someone else in a few weeks anyway. laddiebuck 03:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've spent lots of time in schools in many different countries. Your perspective is distinctly European. Believe me, I sympathize! But Wikipedia isn't just for Europeans, nor should it be entirely Euro-centric. --Truth About Spelling 20:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Jean Wahl

Why did you switch the spelling to British spelling? France isn't part of England! There is no Wikipedia rule saying that European topics should use British spelling! --PeterH2 19:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello. I agree completely that the rule often invoked by Wikipedians about non-UK, - Ireland, and -Malta Europe being a linguistic subdivision of England does not exist, and should not exist, just as little as should a rule about South America being a linguistic subdivision of the U.S. But look at my edit summary. I changed the spelling because the first substantial version of the article was written with British spelling. If it had been written with American spelling, I would have switched the spelling to American spelling. Cheers, --Truth About Spelling 19:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (national varieties of English)

Hi, I'm writing to you because of your participation on this page.

User:Kevin Murray has called it a "rejected proposal", but that can be reversed. I think the page might need to be more than just examples if it's going to have a chance of gaining consensus. I've started a draft at User:Joeldl/Varieties of English Draft. Let me know what you think. Joeldl 14:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean this disrespectfully. But I am curious why someone with so few edits at WP is trying to determine policy for the project. I can see that you are a polite and thoughtful person so I am asking this away from the main discussion. There are no specific rules about "seniority" but it seem that some experience would be beneficial in this endeavor. The other major proponent, Joeldl, has been with us for a very short time too. Might you both want to immerse yourselves in the WP experience before proposing changes? --Kevin Murray 01:41, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[refactored comment by Joeldl]

I take no offense, so no worries! And I understand your question. But I actually have tons of experience on WP, though almost all of it was either a long time ago, or as an anon. I only recently created this account to try to focus on some of the spelling/dialect issues that exist here (and which bugged me in years past). I haven't had the time to be as engaged as I'd hoped, but my workload will soon change (I hope...). What I referred to as that about which I was "uncertain" was, specifically, the use of the "rejected", "historical", etc. tags. Details of how spelling/national English variety differences are handled on WP, on the other hand, I'm extremely familiar with, and have thought about quite a bit. --Truth About Spelling 19:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (spelling) discussion

• Oppose (very conditionally). The condition is: if Dtrebbien's solution, which includes "non-American English" as a default, is part of the implementation. 1) Ain't no such thing as "Non-American English"; 2) Minor though it may seem, this will piss people off and simply displace the spelling wars (though it also will partly reduce them). But, a solution with no fixed default that will be read as anti-American I would strongly support. (Note: I'm not American.) --Truth About Spelling 21:47, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Truth About Spelling, I know that there is no such thing as "non-American English". There is, however, a "non-American English spelling", which is what I wrote on the documentation.

Also, from a programming viewpoint (I do quite a bit of programming), it is imperative to have some sort of default spelling. What happens when a new dialect code appears, for example? They might see nothing were it not for a default spelling.

« D. Trebbien (talk) 2007 May 20 14:47 (UTC)