Template talk:American and British English differences

Vocabulary

Why is spelling but not pronunciation listed under "vocabulary"? jnestorius^(talk) 18:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Alphabetical Ordering

The correct alphabetical ordering for the UK and US flags should be the UK then the US as 'K' in 'Kingdom' comes before 'S' in 'States'. My edit reflecting this was reverted by Voretus as 'British-centric', but as far as I know both countries should agree on this, so I would argue this revert was 'American-centric'. As there seems to be some disagreement, I thought I would ask for other opinions before editing. Potahto (talk) 15:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The template was originally ordered as it is now. Voretus (talk) 02:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

As a subject concerning the differences between the two countries the flags shouldn't be ordered in manner that puts one in a more important position than the other. The widely used convention for that is alphabetical order and I see no reason to depart from that here. Voretus, when you modified the order putting the US flag first on 20 June 2008 your edit summary said 'alphabetizing', so as that was your thinking at the time, have you now changed your stance? This just seems to add weight to my conjecture that your edit revert of 27 July 2008 was biased towards the US. Potahto (talk) 07:48, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

My thinking for that edit was actually that of my above statement. It's also in alphabetical order as the template isn't talking about the countries. It's talking about the dialects of American English and British English. That's why I said "british-centric" in my summary. I made an assumption since it was both a change from how it was, and a change to make them non-alphabetical. Voretus (talk) 12:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Certainly, the convention is that the first major edit should set abitrary choices of style, but the original template was not ordered completely alphabetically (see the computing section). This is more a question of Wikipedia style. There we agree, 'The most basic form of organization is alphabetical or numerical'. Broadly read, the manual of style views flags as representing countries. More specifically, it says, 'They can aid navigation in long lists or tables... the flags should be accompanied with country names'. With the adjective present I don't feel the country name is needed to aid the reader, but given the manual of style and as the flags are the most prominent component in the list, it seems strange to order them by the relatively small captions. Potahto (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Why not just get rid of the flags altogether? I see no real use for them. --Joowwww (talk) 18:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that's probably the right thing to do. Given that the title of the box is '...Differences', why are the first links not about these differences? Also, I now think the Wikipedia style manual suggests the use of flags is inappropriate here. I would suggest removing the flags and moving the links to the British and American English pages to the bottom of the box. Potahto (talk) 14:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The American flag/American English link should be listed above the British flag/British English link, because more people speak American English and also A comes before B obviously. --Tocino 19:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The fact that there are more Americans is so absolutely irrelevant it makes me angry that you even said it. That is just another example of the illogical American-centric attitude of some Wikipedia editors. McLerristarr | Mclay1 04:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, last I heard, three countries speak American English: US, Japan, and Liberia.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:14, 1 July 2011 (UTC)