What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?

Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.

Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)?

John C wrote:

> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? 

I think US English is in the majority, but I've seen setColour as well.

For bigger projects, it's usually defined in the coding standards etc...

> Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)? 

I normally use "pidgin", but maybe I should be using Swedish instead ?

struct färg
{
	float röd,grön,blå;
}

To put that unicode to some use... :-) Seriously, normally US English*.

--anders


* mostly because most of the systems that I use originate from the US ?

John C wrote:
> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
> 
> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize').  Perhaps it's because the
> well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
> 
> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)? 

I don't know about Canada, but in Australia I don't know of many cases of US spelling. You'll find lots of cases of "-ize", but actually, most of the "-ize" words have always been in the OED as a valid alternative spelling of the "-ise" words. So even in British English it is actually a choice between two valid spellings.

(BTW, Microsoft Word has very strange ideas about what spelling we use in Australia. We all choose "New Zealand" spelling).

"colour"/"color" seems like a very minor issue compared to measurement units; it seems absurd to me that Imperial units are allowed anywhere near a computer (why are inches included in the Windows GDI, but cubits are not? ;-) ). A lot of the APIs you mention have some severe built-in US-centricness, eg with date formats, so I don't think they're great role models.

Consistency is much more important. Just don't have: getColour()/setColor() :-).

"Don Clugston" <dac@nospam.com.au> wrote in message news:dpbgq0$960$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> John C wrote:
>> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
>>
>> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'),
>> 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize').  Perhaps it's because
>> the
>> well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and
>> .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center';
>> color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or
>> International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
>>
>> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)?
>
> I don't know about Canada, but in Australia I don't know of many cases of US spelling. You'll find lots of cases of "-ize", but actually, most of the "-ize" words have always been in the OED as a valid alternative spelling of the "-ise" words. So even in British English it is actually a choice between two valid spellings.

True. "-ize" is increasingly common in the UK, depending on taste.

>
> (BTW, Microsoft Word has very strange ideas about what spelling we use in Australia. We all choose "New Zealand" spelling).

That makes me chuckle, since I grew up in NZ.

>
> "colour"/"color" seems like a very minor issue compared to measurement units; it seems absurd to me that Imperial units are allowed anywhere near a computer (why are inches included in the Windows GDI, but cubits are not? ;-) ). A lot of the APIs you mention have some severe built-in US-centricness, eg with date formats, so I don't think they're great role models.

Isn't DPI (dots per inch) the standard for printer resolution?

>
> Consistency is much more important. Just don't have: getColour()/setColor() :-).
>

Indeed.

What prompted this discussion was a couple of errors I was getting with another library, because I was trying to position something with CentreToScreen when it wanted CenterToScreen. Took me ages to see what was wrong.

John C wrote:
> "Don Clugston" <dac@nospam.com.au> wrote in message news:dpbgq0$960$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> 
>>"colour"/"color" seems like a very minor issue compared to measurement units; it seems absurd to me that Imperial units are allowed anywhere near a computer (why are inches included in the Windows GDI, but cubits are not? ;-) ). A lot of the APIs you mention have some severe built-in US-centricness, eg with date formats, so I don't think they're great role models.
> 
> Isn't DPI (dots per inch) the standard for printer resolution?

Yes, unfortunately... Your monitor is measured in inches, the engine of your car in horse powers, the distance between the pins in many connectors are measured in mils, etc... Why are people so reluctant to change to something that is obviously better?

Rather irritating are programs that default to Letter instead of A4, and where metric units seem to be added as an afterthought... Where the usage of metric units leads to rounding errors and subtle bugs. Programs that use cm instead of mm and use a default grid-size of 0.127 cm.

>>Consistency is much more important. Just don't have: getColour()/setColor() :-).
>>
> Indeed.

Consistency can still be hard when different libraries use different spelling. Using google, some common american spellings are >6 times more common than the british ones. A common CS term: "nearest neighbor"/"nearest neighbour" has a 4:1 ratio on google and citeseer.
Looking at common function names:

setColor is 60 times more common than setColour
set_color is 130 times more common than set_colour
getCenter is 80 times more common than getCentre

US-english identifiers are problably what most people expect.

> What prompted this discussion was a couple of errors I was getting with another library, because I was trying to position something with CentreToScreen when it wanted CenterToScreen. Took me ages to see what was wrong. 

I once spent ~2 hours in JBuilder staring at semi-autogenerated code without noticing that there were two different identifiers: scrollPane1 and scrollPanel... It didn't help that 1 and l were completely identical in the font JBuilder used.

/Oskar

John C wrote:
> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
> 
> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
> 
> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)? 
> 
> 

Canada, formally, doesn't really borrow from US English.  If we use US English, it's just from whim or because we can.  True Canadian English uses mostly British spelling. Cheque vs check; centre vs center; metre vs meter.  But I have seen more of a drift towards US spelling over the years here.  It must be due to the geographical proximity.

On the other hand, most people are such bad spellers, that many wouldn't even notice if someone was spelling differently. ;)

-JJR

John C wrote:
> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
> 
> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
> 
> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)? 
> 

Personally, I would actually consider using D's 'alias' statements to provide /both/ options.

# struct Color { float red, green, blue; }
# alias Color Colour;
#
# void setColor (Color x) { ... }
# alias setColor setColour;

I might even start doing this in my own projects, just... because.  And now that you mention it, I'm actually somewhat curious as to just /why/ HTML uses US spellings, considering it was a British advent.

On an unrelated note, anybody else watching the XHTML/2.0 draft?  Its... interesting.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/

-- Chris Sauls

Yes.  Interesting is a good description.

I'm American, so I shouldn't comment much on this issue, except that consistency is what's important.  If my printer says it's 80 dpc (dots per centimeter) and I can't find anything in the documentation of Photoshop about what the crap that is, I'm going to return the printer, and never buy it again, nor recommend it to anyone.

The same goes for documentation.  And toasters for that matter, I want American plugs.  I'll return it if it has a British plug.

-[Unknown]


> John C wrote:
> 
>> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
>>
>> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
>>
>> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)?
> 
> 
> Personally, I would actually consider using D's 'alias' statements to provide /both/ options.
> 
> # struct Color { float red, green, blue; }
> # alias Color Colour;
> #
> # void setColor (Color x) { ... }
> # alias setColor setColour;
> 
> I might even start doing this in my own projects, just... because.  And now that you mention it, I'm actually somewhat curious as to just /why/ HTML uses US spellings, considering it was a British advent.
> 
> On an unrelated note, anybody else watching the XHTML/2.0 draft?  Its... interesting.
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/
> 
> -- Chris Sauls

"John C" <johnch_atms@hotmail.com> wrote:
>What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
>
>Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
>
>Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)?
>
>

Since D has aliases, why don't you do both?  Then we don't have to go looking through the documentation when Object.Color is missing :)
-- 
Email works.

"Chris Sauls" <ibisbasenji@gmail.com> wrote in message news:dpbsgp$1836$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> John C wrote:
>> What's the consensus for API spelling conventions? Should I use my native spelling, British English, or has programming all but standardised on US English?
>>
>> Most APIs seem to use US spellings of words such as 'colour' ('color'), 'centre' ('center') and 'normalise' ('normalize'). Perhaps it's because the well-known ones are written in the US, for example Microsoft's SDK and .NET and Sun's JDK. And HTML is US English (align='center'; color='#CCCCCC'). But I have used some libraries that have British (or International) English spellings - Scintilla springs to mind.
>>
>> Does it even matter, though? Should I just use whatever comes naturally? Which variant do non-English speakers use -- do you write letters, emails etc in British English but program in US English? Have I opened a can of worms (because Canadian and Australian English, for instance, borrow from both)?
>
> Personally, I would actually consider using D's 'alias' statements to provide /both/ options.
>
> # struct Color { float red, green, blue; }
> # alias Color Colour;
> #
> # void setColor (Color x) { ... }
> # alias setColor setColour;

That's a nice solution. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll use it.

>
> I might even start doing this in my own projects, just... because.  And now that you mention it, I'm actually somewhat curious as to just /why/ HTML uses US spellings, considering it was a British advent.

I've gleaned that Berners-Lee handed development of HTML over to the Internet Engineering Task Force, who were US-based. As well as that, Netscape and Microsoft added proprietry extensions, some of which were later adopted as standard. So it's a bit of a mish-mash.

>
> On an unrelated note, anybody else watching the XHTML/2.0 draft?  Its...
> interesting.
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/
>
> -- Chris Sauls