British And American English In Your Articles

Although it may not appear so at a first glance, there are many considerable differences between British and American English. There are nuances and dialects, typical for each of the English speaking territories, which they do not share with each other. The differences go from the ways the words are written to the uses of verb morphology and tenses. Examples of differently written words are: colour vs. color, metre vs. meter, fulfil vs. fulfill, and many others. Example of differently used tense and morphology are: learnt vs. learned. Anyhow, today there are many different dialects of English language and none of them can be called ‘official’. They are simply different and you, as an article author, will have to abide to each, depending on what is your target audience. Almost every popular word processor has integrated spell checker system that will help you check consistency of the chosen dialect in your article and transform it to a proper one if you happened to make a mistake between favourite and favorite or analyse and analyze.

Article authors often need to communicate their message to a very specific, geographically conditioned target audience, where it will be very important to make appropriate research of their English dialect and adjust your writing towards them. If you do not make an effort to do so, you risk your target readers to misunderstand your message, or in worst case scenario to get turned away by your articles. Typical such a situation would be art or interior design related subject where your readers would be constantly distracted by word ‘color’ spelled differently than what they are used to.

It may not look like a big deal to you but the fact is that if you do not pay enough attention to your target audience and their zone of commodity, you might as well lose them.

One thing that is also important, is that once you set with one dialect remain consistent with it throughout the whole article. This is very easy tip to follow if you are writing on your own dialect, but may be difficult to follow if you are writing for readers that belong to another one. Anyhow, if you yourself aren’t sure about all the differences that exist between British and American English make sure to make use of appropriate spell checker a habit.

You can Google-up many useful resources on this topic, that will help you fortify your knowledge and make writing for the target audience different than your own much easier and more pleasurable.

By: Una Page

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Submit your articles to a Free Article Directory and get published within 24 hours!