12 Responses

1. Americanization of TZ

   Hi

   Your pozting made me laugh. I worked for a UZ firm for 6 yearz and unfortunately their love of the letter Z iz pronounced. Kinda cute in a way zince the Britz hardly ever uze the letter. Happy new year to you

2. Systems and all that

   Hi Juliet

   The system is designed this way, we have no control over it – and yes, we are British, well half Irish and half Welsh to be precise, with a dash of Scots for good measure. Do let me know if you spot an unsightly ‘z’ masquerading as an ‘s’ and I shall correct it at once!

   Verity

3. Zzzzzzzzs

   Now, I wonder if I should be participating on TZ as I live in France but work in the UK? Mais, je continuerai. Je ne suis pas un imbécile.

   Jim

4. ise or ize?

   It’s a common misconception that ‘ize’ is the US variant – in fact, we used it in the UK probably long before the Americans did.  It comes from the Greek root of the words.  It’s really only relatively recently that we’ve opted for ‘ise’.  There are however some words that are always ‘ise’ because they don’t come from the Greek.  If anyone is interested, there’s a handy summary at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ise1.htm

   As with all writing though, it’s about writing for your readers.  If your audience are likely to think that ‘ize’ is an Americanisation and that you are therefore ignorant of proper English spellings, you’re best sticking with ‘ise’!

   Beverley

5. Date formats

   Hi Juliet

   The strange thing is that when you go into Any Answers and look at the first page, the dates are all in the US format, but when you go into any of the questions all the dates are in the UK format. Odd!

   Sue

6. Let’s clear this up

   American date format: mm/dd/yyyy

   UK date format: dd/mm/yyyy

   Any Answers date format: yyyy/mm/dd

   We are non conformists here! And anyway, in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Our community comes from all over the world, not just the UK, as Jim himself commented, so this way, everyone’s happy 😉

    

7. “Z” v “S”

   As a Brit living and working in the US I still get the two mixed up.  However, it’s quite surprising the number of Americans who assume that I have spelt things incorrectly when I use an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’ or slip into my roots and put a ‘u’ in color or labor.  Many average Americans are unaware that things are spelt a little differently in, dare I say it, "real English"!

8. Does it matter

   To coin an Americanism….errrr yeah? When you do a search for archived articles and you come up with a date reading

   01/07/2009   can you tell if thats June or January?

9. Normality is restored

   We have ‘corrected’ the date order now, it is now dd/mm/yyyy across the board folks!

10. Hurrah

    Breaks out into spontaneous rendition of Rule Britannia.

11. Back again

    It appears the date issue has resurfaced, have a look at Anyanswers.

12. Still there

    Still not solved…..