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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: eno on Jun 21, '04 04:34:54PM

Spell it "color" to help people with searches? To help Americans, you mean.

"Colour" would've been a better, fairer choice.

Of the 293 million people that make up the population of the USA, there are 30 million that speak English as a second language.

This compares with a global estimate of 320 million who speak English as a first language, or 460 million when you include second-language speakers.

This page, however, estimates that as many as 400 million speak English as a first language, and the total goes as high as 1500 million when you include people who speak it as a "foreign" language. See also this page for more info.

God bless America. I think you should've left the original poster's choice of spelling unedited.



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: azguy on Jun 21, '04 04:54:33PM

Good god... settle down.

Here's much more relevant information anyway:
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q204data_sum.pdf

Considering only "offcial" "English" speaking countries,...
...Twice as many Apple computers were sold in America than in Europe last quarter... This does not include the Apple Retail stores, and not all of Europe speaks English anyway.

Sorry that more Americans use Macs, but it's just numbers. Simple majority wins.



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: blubbernaut on Jun 21, '04 07:38:07PM

Dude, if it was a simple matter of numbers, then the rest of the English speaking world would have forced Americans to spell "colour" and "honour" et. al. correctly in the first place. Sorry, majority wins. ;)



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: chyna4xena on Jun 21, '04 08:50:15PM

Most Americans write "color" so it should be color.
Ah! But, most people write "colour" so it should be colour.
No, wait! More Macs are sold to people who write "color" so it should be color.

Perhaps we can settle on "kulla" ? Actually, I think robg is right to say uniformity is necessary, and despite being an English English as opposed to American English speaker, I am happy if he wants to use "color".

Perhaps a mention on the Advanced Search page that American spellings are used could avoid any searchers trying to use "colour" ?



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: Peter Maurer on Jun 22, '04 04:20:01AM
You didn't want to imply that all those who are not American and speak English as their nth language would spell "color" as "colour", or did you? I think it's a very good idea to have the editor choose spelling according to his country's conventions. Most scientific journals do so. (Think of it like this: If MacOSXHints.com were a printed journal, then it would be printed in the US.) This discussion is completely superfluous, but I just couldn't resist... ;-)

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http://www.petermaurer.de/butler/

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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: dennisbest on Jun 22, '04 08:51:38AM

You know, the 'u' is pointless. Perhaps you could at least admit that even if more people globally add the superflous "u" to color and honor, they are wasting time and energy. Think of the calories from writing and typing the extra "u" — not to mention the pixels, scrabble tiles, and ink!

So please join us and put and end to this nonsense and stop the waste. U can make a difference!



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: moyashi on Jun 22, '04 01:29:57PM

eww gad!

Why don't you shoot:
Webster for choosing the British English spellings for use in the States
AND
Cambridge for choosing to use the "popular" French spellings in the UK (or was it England at the time)

So those extra vowels are and inverted spellings come from French and not English.

So use colour or centre if you support French based English and color and center if you support the [ahem] Queen's English. :)

but ... this leads into another whole ball of wax as to what makes English -- English :)



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: osxpounder on Jun 23, '04 02:56:52PM

Raised with American English spellings, I still prefer "colour" and "flavour" because the extra "u" just seems to make those words more colourful and flavourful. I'm glad there's some variety -- especially when it comes to accents and dialects. The spelling differences do trip up search engines, however, and there's no good reason why that must be -- search engines configured for English can be adapted to treat "color" and "colour" as equivalent, so why not do it?

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osxpounder



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: rusto on Jun 22, '04 04:55:50PM

robg coulda helped this hint appear for searches of either spelling if he merely added a parenthetical instance of the 'other' spelling to the posted hint. This would have kept (nearly) everybody happy.



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Add color labels to message in Mail.app
Authored by: davidnorton on Jun 22, '04 06:32:01PM

I think people should use common sense -- Americans can understand the British spelling of a word, and vice-versa. If you are doing a search, on any website, search in the "language" (spelling) of the country the site is based out of.



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