User talk:808Poiboy

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Happy editing! Peaceray (talk) 20:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia and varieties of English

Hi 808Poiboy, welcome to Wikipedia! I noticed that you raised a spelling question on the Botany page : “specialise” instead of “specialize”. I thought you might find it useful to have a longer explanation than the one given in that Talk page.

First, the way you can tell the language of an article is when you first open it for editing. If the language has been set, there will be a tag right at the top, in curly brackets, saying what language is used.

Because Wikipedia draws its editors from around the globe, there is no single set of spelling that we use. For articles that are closely tied to a particular country, the variety of English for that article will be the one most closely associated with that country. An article on the US Congress will use US spelling, an article on King Charles will use British spelling, an article on Prime Minister Trudeau will use Canadian spelling, and so on.

So why is the Botany article tagged with “British English”? If the subject of an article isn’t tied to a specific country (eg science articles like “Botany”), then the language of the article is set by whoever starts the article, or did the first major work on it. I assume that means that whoever started “Botany” was British and used British English.

Once the language of an article is set and a tag put at the top of the editing page, it shouldn’t be changed without consensus. There is no universal “right way” to spell, and once the language has been set, we don’t want to have ongoing disputes about the choice of language. Better to focus on making the substance of the article better, not get into debates about “meter” v “metre”, or “-ise” v “-ize”. 😀

Hope this helps. For more info, check the WP Manual of Style on varieties of English: MOS:ENGVAR.

By the way, thanks for taking it easy when just starting out, and asking questions. Anyone can edit, but it helps to look around a bit as well. Happy editing! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:57, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]