Style Specifics - Writing for Computer Science - page 109

The English-speaking countries have different spelling conventions. For example,
the American “traveler” becomes the British “traveller” while “fulfill” becomes “ful-
fil”. In Britain it is incorrect to spell “-our” words as “-or”, but, for example, “vigour”
and “vigorous” are both correct. 5 TheAmerican “center” is theBritish “centre”, “pro-
gram” is “programme” (except for computer program ), “catalog” and “analog” are
“catalogue” and “analogue”, “acknowledgment” is “acknowledgement”, and “judg-
ment” is “judgement”. Another confusion is with regard to the suffixes “-ize” and
“-yze”, which have the same recommended spelling in both countries, but are often
spelt as “-ise” and “-yse” outside the United States. 6 As discussed in Chap. 1 , British
spelling has largely been used throughout this topic.
Science is international—technical writing is usually for a readership that is accus-
tomed to reading text from around the world—and it is accepted that a national of
one country won't necessarily use the spelling of another. The most important thing
is to spell consistently and to be consistent with suffixes such as “-ize” without intro-
ducing errors such as “expertize” or “otherwize”. Note that many journals insist on
their own standards for spelling and presentation, or insist that the spelling be con-
sistently of one nationality or another, and thus may choose to modify anything they
publish.
The best authority for national spelling is a respectable dictionary written for
that country. However, dictionaries are primarily a record of current non-technical
spelling; the presence of a particular spelling in a dictionary does not prove that it is
used in your discipline. The choice of spelling for a technical term may be dictated
by the usage in other papers, not by your nationality.
Jargon
The word “jargon” means terms used in a specialized vocabulary or mode of speech
familiar only to a group or profession . 7 As such, the use of jargon is an important part
of scientific communication—how convenient it is to be able to say “CPU” rather
than “the part of the computer that executes instructions”. Some use of technical
language, which inevitably makes the writing inaccessible to a wider readership, is
essential for communication with specialists. But the more technical the language in
a paper, the smaller the audience will be.
Inmathematical writing, formal notation is a commonly used jargon. Mathematics
is often unavoidable, but that doesn't mean that it must be impenetrable.
5 An editor of the first edition of this topic suggested that the material should have “an international
flavor”.
6 However, these problems are overstated. For example, of the 6,000 or so distinct words used to
write this topic (modulo suffixes), other than “-ize” words only 20 or so have a nationality-specific
spelling.
7 From the Oxford Shorter Dictionary, which also lists unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing;
nonsense; gibberish; twittering .