From smyth at wehi.edu.au  Mon Apr 28 13:25:54 2003
From: smyth at wehi.edu.au (Gordon Smyth)
Date: Mon Apr 28 04:26:09 2003
Subject: [Rd] British or American spelling?
In-Reply-To: <16043.51111.795389.439162@mithrandir.hornik.net>
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 <5.2.0.9.1.20030427151644.00acee70@imaphost.wehi.edu.au>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.1.20030428121750.00b04998@imaphost.wehi.edu.au>

At 10:05 PM 27/04/2003, Kurt Hornik wrote:
> >>>>> Gordon Smyth writes:
>
> > I was curious to read the following in the "Guidelines for Rd files" at
> > http://developer.r-project.org/Rds.html:
>
> >      "For consistency, aim to use British (rather than American)
> >      spelling.  (NB: British spelling often uses -ize as in
> >      `capitalize'. The view of > spell -b of British spelling is a
> >      flawed American one. There are English/Scottish differences
> >      too.)"
>
> > because R seems to use American spellings throughout, e.g., "color"
> > instead of "colour".
>
> > What is the current R-devel view on this?
>
>I don't think it is 'throughout' but rather a mixture of both, for both
>R and packages on CRAN, and I don't think we can force the exclusive
>use of British spelling.

Thanks for that. I was considering going through my Rd files and making 
changes in line with the recommendation, but now I will leave as is.

Even though I live in a British spelling country, it makes sense to me to 
use American spellings for publically available programs and associated 
documentation.

>Actually, this is one of the main motivations for having functionality
>for fuzzy matching in R.
>
>-k

Cheers
Gordon


[Rd] British or American spelling?
Gordon Smyth