Color vs Colour

[Chez_Guevara]

@Walloon

Seen in British movie credits: “Colour by Technicolor”.

This video of Technicolour is in Technicolor.

[Mbossa]

@TheLoadedDog

The real fun begins when Australians use the word “thong” in front of Americans: “so two elderly Catholic priests were walking along the beach in thongs…”

Aussies and Kiwis have a reputation for being obsessed with sports, but most of us don’t go so far as to “root” for our favourite team.

[Mangetout]

I think that when you’re quoting a written source, it’s correct to preserve the spelling variants. I don’t think the same is true when you’re quoting something somebody said, unless the word was a proper noun or something as detailed above.

So suppose Gordon Brown has announced that the party logo will be changed to something pink or purple.

I think in America this would be written (something like):
Gordon Brown said today that the color of the Labour party logo will be changed.

But if it was quoting something in already print in British English, it might be:
A press release from 10 Downing Street today states ‘It is the prime Minister’s intention to change the **colour **of the **Labour **Party logo’

[jasonh300]

@Leaffan

Now if only we could get you U.S. dopers to stop the posts with things like "If I go 10 miles an our over the limit and my concealed gun permit is invalid, can the cops ask for my zip code before they read my Miranda rights, and then take the fifth before the sheriff asks me if I’m DUI even though I’m 20?

You’re going to find region-specific posts on any message board. If you don’t know what it means, you can probably just skip that particular thread.

I’ve seen posts by British dopers that I have to read two or three times to figure out what they’re talking about. If it requires too much brain power, or I have to go look up word meanings, I just move on. If I keep seeing the same thing over and over again in different posts/threads, then I’m inclined to dig a little deeper and find out what they’re talking about.

It is helpful to look up and see where the poster is from. Some people leave that field blank or put something a little too general such as “Earth”. While it may seem cute, sometimes it makes it difficult to answer a question since you have no clue if they’re referring to the weather in Antarctica or traffic laws in Germany.

[jasonh300]

Just wanted to comment that in the wikipedia link earlier, the first line says In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardised.

Standardised is a word that has not been standardized.

[Chronos]

In England it is spelled “colour,” but in America it is spelled “color.”

The sentence above uses both spellings, no matter who writes it. And the two spellings cannot be interchanged in that sentence.

Nope. That sentence doesn’t use either spelling; it mentions both.

Here’s an odd example: I actually think of “gray” and “grey” as slightly different colors. This stems, I think, from a childhood spent reading Tolkien and other British fantasy authors. When an author in such genre refers to something grey, it’s usually to something wispy and possibly mysterious, like fogs or Gandalf’s beard. “Gray”, on the other hand, I learned from American sources, and is much more bland.