In casual communication I employ a consistent mix of American and British English spellings, accordingly to my personal preferences. E.g. I definitely prefer realize, randomize, fantasize to realise, randomise, fantasise, as much as I definitely prefer armour, humour, honour to armor, humor, honor. Naturally, I'd like to carry on writing like that in games I make, but since I take it very seriously as any other aspect of game development, I have to consider if this is an issue or not.
I surely understand it can be viewed as unprofessional, but I wonder if that would matter any beyond that. Would you as the player be bothered by it? Is that a big deal? What would be your advice? Should I just carry on merrily with my mixed spelling style or choose one spelling system per game and stick to it in game writing?
I'm American and I write everything the British way except for any word like Legalize. Gotta have that Z. Also I pronounce Z as Z not Zed.
I don't think anyone minds mixed, in fact, if characters are from different locations it could be a funny obscure joke.
It wouldn't bother me at all, because I do the exact same thing.
I'm trying to Americanize my spellings all around, though, for much the same reason that you state: Professionalism.
I mix them up in writing and everyday conversation, and the only time I have trouble is if I'm with old friends in the United States and I use the term "American Football". Much like if I'm outside the U.S. and I use the term "Soccer". I'm not sure about in academia these days, but I don't think the average reader cares one way or the other. You may want to think about it if you have characters with an international background where it really makes sense, or obviously if you have a character that is from a small town in Mississippi, never visited elsewhere, and hasn't been exposed to the outside World at all.
As a tester of various games and an English major I can tell you that, yes, it would be a big deal. It's not just the player thinking it's "unprofessional" what you'll encounter is that a lot of players are going to be writing you saying that it's wrong. My experience has been that it's primarily Americans that have this issue with the spellings. Typically, the way that you can get around a percentage of people writing in about it is to indicate that a character has an accent. So, if you have a character that has a British accent, writing for the character in British-style writing will just be taken as the character's accent and not spelling errors. Personally, I feel that the game should be written in the style of the area that it's in. So if your game takes place in America, using American-style spellings is the way to go. It just gives people more of a feeling of authenticity. The same goes for British-style, if it's in an area like Britain or Australia where that's more the style, then it just seems more authentic. Unfortunately, a lot of players get distracted by the changing styles and people who feel like they have to correct every mistake even when they weren't asked to will harangue you over it.
Thanks for the responses, guys. Very reassuring. :)
Renodox, your reply is interesting. Although I'm having doubts regarding whether the case you're presenting actually covers my concerns. I have a hard time seeing players writing to me that I'm wrong as something negative or indeed remarkable at all. If I'm going to get anywhere close to having an audience it'd mean receiving all sorts of feedback, and getting nitpicks on spellings is a cute gift compared to the caliber of comments you so often encounter on youtube. So if I only had to go on that alone, I would do nothing. However, what I think you're also hinting at, is that people will be actually distracted by it, which is much more concerning. Is that right?
Then you talk about the area the game is in and that presents another dilemma, as I expect the absolute majority of my works not to take place on Earth at all. Which by that logic cuts me loose from any requirements of authenticity. Should I still be concerned by people getting distracted then?
Also are you saying that consistently sticking to British spelling throughout wouldn't have a similar distracting effect on American players?
I would tend to agree with Renodox, with the caveat that it wouldn't really bother me if I was playing a game that was inconsistent. I guess if the rest of the game was absorbing it would only be a minor distraction to me. I don't mind American spellings, but if I saw a mixture, I would think it was weird. But not devastatingly upsetting!
The other question I feel you should be asking though is whether this question is really holding you back from actually making the games? If so, it may well just be best to go with the method you're personally most comfortable with. You can always claim it's a "style thing". :-D
Interesting. No, it certainly doesn't hold me back. I'm mostly just curious. I could even do batch processing of all in-game text and automatically replace the exceptions just before release if I wanted.
Ironically, the AGS engine & editor code has inconsistent US/GB usage of terms like Color/Colour, and some others. :)
Funnily, the Oxford English Dictionary prefers "ize" to "ise" in spite of being British. So you can go with your preference without upsetting the OED.
If it's a simple spelling in a sentence I think it's not a big deal, but if it's something that's on a GUI, in the players face all the time, it might become distracting depending where you're located.
As Ali pointed out, the -ize endings are also valid in BrEng, although less common, so in that particular example you wouldn't actually be inconsistent. I would say if you have some preference you use consistently, then it's OK, even if it combines forms from different standards. Keep in mind that there are also other English-speaking countries which have their own norms, e.g. Canada, Australia, India, South Africa etc.
But if you start mixing randomly, sometimes color sometimes colour, or color but flavour, that would seem sloppy. Though personally I sometimes use British spellings (among generally US forms) to distinguish certain senses, such as dialog (for the UI or programming term) vs. dialogue (for conversations), or font (for typesets) vs. fount (for a source or a fountain), the latter having become so common that most probably don't realize it's the same word.
Ali, Snarky, that's peculiar, but the thing is, my preferences are actually mostly in favour of American spellings. Or at least it feels that way.
I'm not completely sure what point you wanted to raise with that there are many English-speaking countries, but what I gather from it is that the existing variety already necessitates all english speakers tolerating the differences. And that makes some works not adhering completely to either of the standards a rather minor thing.
I don't see how regional varieties of spelling is important anywhere except perhaps for road signs or texts that exist within the game universe. Normal messages wouldn't be seen by any of the characters, so the spelling shouldn't matter. Also, as Snarky points out, English has so many geographical varieties that nobody can keep track of exactly which one is being used, or how consistently.
Thirdly, English is basically a lingua franca now, and I don't expect that even a majority of my future players will necessarily be native English speakers, so if there's a professor in Sussex complaining about how I've used both "lift" and "gas" in the same sentence, I couldn't be bothered.
Having said that, I do pay a lot of attention to words and their spelling in my texts, so I hope there's not that much to complain about :)
For any game, I simply create a translation source at some point, open that in MS Word, and run a full spellcheck. As a result, that also standardizes the spelling to either English or American but not both; that's not why I do it but it's a nice side effect.
QuoteRenodox, your reply is interesting. Although I'm having doubts regarding whether the case you're presenting actually covers my concerns. I have a hard time seeing players writing to me that I'm wrong as something negative or indeed remarkable at all. If I'm going to get anywhere close to having an audience it'd mean receiving all sorts of feedback, and getting nitpicks on spellings is a cute gift compared to the caliber of comments you so often encounter on youtube. So if I only had to go on that alone, I would do nothing. However, what I think you're also hinting at, is that people will be actually distracted by it, which is much more concerning. Is that right?
Then you talk about the area the game is in and that presents another dilemma, as I expect the absolute majority of my works not to take place on Earth at all. Which by that logic cuts me loose from any requirements of authenticity. Should I still be concerned by people getting distracted then?
Also are you saying that consistently sticking to British spelling throughout wouldn't have a similar distracting effect on American players?
What I am saying is that a mixed one will definitely catch people's eyes more than just remaining consistent all throughout. There is no way to please every player. I've dealt with people who were upset over the non-British spellings as well. What it comes down to though, is that consistency is less distracting than a mix. Think about if you have a line of red crayons then you toss in a blue one. The first one people are going to notice is the blue one and that'll give it more attention.
So what I'm saying is that you'll get more attention to your words and spellings in the game if you mix it up, but the trade off is that you'll end up with some negative feedback because of it. If it's easier for you to mix them up though, I'd suggest that you remain consistent with the same word at least. So if you use "color" as opposed to "colour" in it's first appearance, then it has to remain "color" and vice-versa. If you mess up with that, then it will be distracting to others.
As far as region goes, if you're basing the game on a ship then which one you choose to use doesn't matter. It's best it remains consistent but if you don't mind some players being distracted by the spelling go for it. The best way to stop the distraction: make the story, characters, and visuals GREAT. It's how so many movie makers manage to keep people from hating their movies for the myriad of mistakes they'll inevitably make.
I think that Renodox is correct. While mixing up the two spellings will probably not bother most people, it will likely bother some people. So this inconsistency will cost you part of the audience, and there is no benefit to having this inconsistency otherwise. Therefore you shouldn't do it.
If it is spelling we are talking about, it would be best to choose either British or American English, and stick to it throughout the game. But at the very very least, be consistent with words that appear more than once , so don't have one character say 'realize' and then another say 'realise' later in the game. And I would say stick to it even if you have characters from different locations.
For lexis, the story changes. Absolutely don't let your American characters call petrol anything other than gas.
I agree best to use one of the other don't mix. I wouldn't vary spellings for characters from England either consistency is more professional. Despite the difference in spelling those words would be read as sounding the same. In those cases as has been mentioned you make sure the terminology is right as in the whole soccer/football thing, but that's not spelling it's more dialect :)
Quote from: Stupot+ on Thu 08/08/2013 00:09:55
If it is spelling we are talking about, it would be best to choose either British or American English, and stick to it throughout the game. But at the very very least, be consistent with words that appear more than once , so don't have one character say 'realize' and then another say 'realise' later in the game. And I would say stick to it even if you have characters from different locations.
For lexis, the story changes. Absolutely don't let your American characters call petrol anything other than gas.
I'm rather on the side of letting each character speak in the way most natural to them, so for a British character I would recommend using British spellings, and American for American characters. Particularly if you're also using slang and spelling dialectal spellings, because otherwise you get bizarre mixes of local patois with completely unrelated spellings.
But the more relevant question is how to treat characters who are not English speakers, and may not "really" be speaking English. Andail's game,
The Samaritan Project, for example, is set in Sweden, so the English dialog presumably represents Swedish: there's no particular reason why it should lean towards either English or American vocabulary. It's really just a question of taste.
Snarky, thanks for bringing that up, it's a good point.
In my game, English isn't as much "English", as it is a universal language that people can understand. I've tried to avoid as many colloqualisms, slang expressions and specific regional features as much as possible, to prevent people from reacting on something being out of place or character.
I've got a lot of confidence when it comes to producing formal English, but I'm really bad at capturing or emulating colloquial, natural speech, so I won't even try my hands at it. I guess this is probably reflected in the bookish tone of my daily posts here in the forum.
One thing I hate is when certain nationalities, especially Asians and Germans I guess - no offence anyone - create games or comics or even speak IRL and try so darn hard to sound American it just gets silly. There are certain types of exchange students I met during my student years that always spoke really bad English, but made sure to insert "ain't" and "my bad" and "whatnot" etc exactly everywhere, in hope of sounding American.