Thursday, 8 March 2007

Ban Americanisms in the Media

The petition is entitled Stop The Use of American Spelling and Terminology in British Media and Publications and the explanatory notes say
"It is a bad example to the youth of today for us to promote the use of Americanised spelling of words. Versions of words such as 'color', 'drive thru' and 'math' should not be used in this country, and more effort should be channelled into ensuring our children and those in education are taught the proper way to spell words, which will then go on to help them in later life."

In principle, I like the idea. The term "math" grates on my very spine.

In practice, it's probably rather hard to justify - in that it's a form, almost, of censorship.

And then - is it actually an issue? I mean, I see these Americanisms quite a lot because I do a lot of my news-reading and so on on the Internet and am therefore reading things written by Americans. The only "media" I read regularly are the BBC news website and the Guardian website. Neither of which I have ever noticed an Americanism on - unsurprisingly, as I'm quite sure both have (indeed, I know the Guardian has) style guides which are followed reasonably rigorously and require British English. So what media, exactly, has the petitioner noticed a problem in?

Without answering that question, the petition begins to look a little mad ...

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