Friday, June 23, 2006

Sometimes its just worth giving in..


After years of battling this I realised today that it is no longer worth trying to fight the auto-correct functions in applications that insist on changing my S to Z without asking. I realized it is just not worth the bother. Does it really matter?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Americanized under duress! I too am sick of the Bill Gates bastardization of the English language. A "zee" in place of an "ess" just looks so daft, but it really isn't worth the trouble of correcting it EVERY time!

Anonymous said...

American English is the official language of our global organization. The preferred American English dictionary is Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition.

THIS IS OUR POLICY!!!

Anonymous said...

The transfer of meaning is more important than the spelling (unless it so bad that it distracts the reader)... so what the hell. GlobaliZe

ATW said...

Agree, on the transfer of meaning being the whole point of communication but really just a matter of being a little frustrated at language being colonised by other nations (ie USA). But I guess that at least I still have the luxury of being able to use my first language 99% of the time. It must be substantially more frustrating having to communicate in English (regardless of spelling conventions) when English is not one's own tongue.

Peas on Toast said...

Yes it does really matter. There is nothing worse than seeing optimize, critisize and extentionalize in a sentence.
Drives me bonkers.

Vallypee said...

Don't ever get me onto this subject...being a teacher of English as a foreign language, I am constantly under siege. I still fly the flag for standard English, though, both in structure and in spelling.

Incidentally most global organisations based in the Netherlands opt for British English as the more elegant option...I'm pleased to say.

ATW said...

Peas, that's just my point (ohmygod just realised I used the wrong "its" in the title - amazed none of the language police out there picked it up..I digress), the point is the inconsistency also drives me bonkers but should it? I should just let it go.

Anne-Marie said...

You should set your dictionary to British English. I set mine to Canadian English and avoid the nasty zees. :)

Cheers,
AM

ATW said...

AM, I've tried this but whenever I cut&paste from other documents or try & edit existing documents the default is usually american. The effort is resetting my dictionary with every doc that I work on.