Quite mundane, and quite pointless, but surprising nonetheless.
I got a parking ticket yesterday, and was surprised to see the word “offence”. My first thought was that the City of Los Angeles must be buying ticket forms from Canada. However, there’s nothing on it to suggest that it was printed there. Another explanation may be that the form is computer generated, and was programmed by people outside the U.S., which could be any country where English is commonly used in technical and business discourse, not least India.
Has anyone else in the U.S. noticed anything like this recently? Not that I mind, at least not until the tickets start to say “impeding the Crown’s highway” or something like that.
This is to pay you back for all the American spellings that are creeping in over here, especially on UK message boards. Thus we get program for (TV) programme, license instead of licence, curb instead of kerb etc. etc.
Oh, I didn’t think you were trying to have an argument. I meant that this was the exact justification she’d give if she had points taken off on a paper for misspellings; she came from Kentucky, which was a commonwealth, and thus should use Commonweal spellings.
ETA: Massachusetts & Pennsylvania are also commonwealths. I think it has something to do with not voting for Nixon.
-RE spellings are okay, like centre, in the USA, just as “center” is okay in Canada. Just not preferred. Also, some words, contrary to popular belief, hold the same spelling anywhere; the unit of measurement really should be spelled “metre” everywhere, while a device that measures something is a “meter” no matter what country you’re in.
“Colour” or “Vigour,” however, are always wrong in the USA. Interestingly, Canadian style manuals have in recent years been calling for the dumpung of the U, for two reasons:
It’s inconsistent with other tenses and forms (e.g. you don’t spell it colourful, you spell it colorful) and
It would prevent the common error of adding U’s in words that never had them, like “Pallor.” “Pallour” is not a word in any language but Canadians are sometimes prone to such things.
