UK Vs USA spellings - Zs Vs Ss and so on...

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   Claire Roachposted 11 years ago

   Do you think spelling mistakes in your hubs go towards giving you a lower score?
   
   I have noticed that if I spell something the UK way it's underlined as wrong, such as socialise and monetise etc.  I wonder if this is putting me at a disadvantage when it comes to the scoring system?  I would prefer to keep to the UK spellings in most of my hubs as they are UK targeted, but don't want to be penaliSed

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      The Examiner-1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Claire,
      The first time that I began reading one of your Hubs I thought that I saw spelling mistakes, until I read more of the Hub and I checked out your profile. I found out where you were from and realized that they were not mistakes.
      Since then I now am aware of when I am reading other Hubs of UK writers. I do not even trust spell checkers for American English. I do not think that you have any worries. :-)
      Kevin

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      MG Singhposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Frankly it doesn't make a difference. the fact is people read teh hub for what it is worth and don't bother about spellings, so if you have good content it will not matter what English spelling you use.

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      Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I always try and use US spellings in order to attract a majority of US traffic, simply because this site is geared towards a mainly US audience. It's easy to make mistakes though. I had one hub where I used the spelling theatre instead of theater. Took me about 2 years to realise it was wrong! No wonder it struggled to get the *right* traffic!

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   CMHypnoposted 11 years ago

   I've never been penalised for using UK spelling.  Its only underlined as incorrect because of a US spell checker.
   
   The only thing you might want to consider is that using the American spellings tends to bring more traffic as they are more frequently searched for.. 
   
   For example, if you are writing about jewellery, you might want to use the American spelling jewelry as it is searched for a lot more.
   
   If you want a lot of traffic to your hubs, try and keep them targetted to as wide an audience as possible - remember there is only around 60 million of us Brits and around 6 billion people on the planet

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      Claire Roachposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah I do want a lot of traffic
      Thanks for the help.

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         CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Good luck with the traffic.  It's a matter of time and persistence and accepting there will be times of terrible lows.  Another thing to consider is spreading your writing around various sites and personal blogs, so if traffic drops on one you still have the other sites to fall back on.

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            Claire Roachposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Fab thank you

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   dwelburnposted 11 years ago

   I had all UK spellings but I'm gradually changing them over to the US spellings now as that's where most of the traffic comes from.

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   JoeYoung22posted 11 years ago

   It's an interesting point; if Americanization brings in more traffic. then using a z in words that end in i-s-e is not a high price to pay. The z suffix is acceptable anyway in most cases; my dictionary offers realize first, and realise as a variant. But where does it end?
   
   Do we say "Mommy is watching her favorite TV show" in order to garner more traffic, or do we stick with the UK version? Then there are those words that we each hold as our own. It would be senseless to Americanize to this extreme, changing -
   
   "Luxuriating in the comfort of a freshly applied nappy, the baby chewed contentedly on its dummy." 
   
   to
   
   "Luxuriating in the comfort of a freshly applied diaper, the baby chewed contentedly on its pacifier." 
   
   All this, AND they drive on the wrong side of the road 
   
   I guess we are still two nations divided by a common language, as Shaw put it.

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      dwelburnposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes I agree Joe. Spellings are one thing but changing words completely is a different matter.

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   jonnycomelatelyposted 11 years ago

   I would agree with your concerns too, Claire.  I don't want to water down my "Englishness," just to please someone with an American background.  I do allow the American spelling most of the time, because if it helps others to read what I write, why not comply.
   However, to "Americanize" the world in this way is not being global in attitude.  Hubpages is open to everyone, across national boarders, so there should be accommodation and flexibility on the part of our HP Ops.

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      CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I don't think HP is restricting any hubber on this matter.  It is a matter of personal choice whether you use US or UK spellings.  I was merely pointing out that there are more searches made with American spellings, so it could be a factor on traffic coming into your hub.
      
      Depends on what you are writing for, but if it's traffic and money it pays to use the top search terms.  I personally wouldn't use the word diaper, but accept that's my choice and that using nappy will sound strange to a lot of Americans.and they won't be searching for it.  The US has a population of around 314 million so a hub titled 'Best Natural Ways to Deal with Diaper Rash' is likely to garner more hits than 'Best Natural Ways to Deal with Nappy Rash'

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   spartucusjonesposted 11 years ago

   The difference are not quite the same as UK and US, but there is also difference between US and Canadian spelling. Because I use Canadian spelling on my word spell check and Hubpages is US spell check, sometimes a word is shown as spelled wrong by one but not the other. My usual thought is that when it comes to titles and keywords that it is better to use the US spelling. Otherwise, I generally don't worry about it that much. That being said, it is probably better to be consistent.

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   Cardisaposted 11 years ago

   When I was in the AP program I had a couple of my hubs moderated for misspellings due to using the UK version. Our hubs went through a moderation process in the beginning and I was told to use US spelling. I raised the issue in our private forum about people who naturally write that way.
   
   What I was told was that most of HP traffic comes from the US and some other cock and bull story. I made it clear that I did not live in the US and where I come from was taught the UK English version.
   
   I believe, so long as you are consistent with your spellings and not mix them in the same hub you are good to go. However, if most of your traffic comes from the US then maybe switching to US English may be a better choice.
   
   Your keywords will depend on what people are searching for. So if you have a strong UK spelling keyword then maybe the hub should be in that version. You won't be penalized for UK spelling. As someone said, the spell checker is US so no worries.

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   lovebuglenaposted 11 years ago

   I'd use the American English spellings of words as those would be more searched for and hence would bring more traffic to hubs.

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   Nell Roseposted 11 years ago

   I have got used to spelling the American way now, but for a while I did mix them up a bit, but because of what has been said in the other comments I now stick to American.

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    AliciaCposted 11 years ago

    I'm got so used to spelling the American way at HubPages that here in Canada I sometimes have to remind myself to spell colour with a u, even though I've used the u ever since I learned how to write. I use the American spelling because of the large U.S. audience for hubs. I do sometimes use the Canadian/British way of spelling in a hub, such when a Canadian or British building is called something like the "Centre for the Performing Arts", because "Centre" is part of the building's name.

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    cfinposted 11 years ago

    Interesting. I have forgotten to update to US English in a long time.

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    IzzyMposted 11 years ago

    For the longest time, it did not matter if we wrote in US English or English English, except where it came to the 'z' words.
    'Color' and 'Colour' are exactly the same to the search engine bot which is looking for the letters C O L O R in the one order.
    For that reason, coloring, colouring, colored and coloured are all the same.
    But one of Google's new updates brought about a regionalization (regionalisation) of what searchers are looking for.
    As a result, people looking for 'red color cars' would be sent to an American site, and people looking for 'red colour cars' would be sent to a local site.
    I started off writing hubs using US spelling, but after getting it badly wrong (I thought the US spelt 'install' as instal') I stuck to what I knew.
    As a result, a good third of my Google traffic daily comes from Google UK, which is kinda sad when I have sales capsules for Amazon.com which no-one in the UK would buy from.

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    1. 40

       Claire Roachposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       I am the same, a lot of my hubs are UK specific but the capsules for Amazon.com and Ebay.com are selling US products.  I can't understand why they (HP) don't have the option!!!

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          CMHypnoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Probably because this is an American owned site.  Maybe setting up the agreements with Amazon UK would be too expensive, time consuming etc to make it worthwhile for the relatively small numbers of UK hubbers.
          
          Also you would need to have an account with both Amazon US and Amazon UK, and some hubbers might not want the hassle of signing up twice.
          
          I used to put text links or link boxes to Amazon UK products in some hubs if I thought it was appropriate to that hub, but I'm not sure if that is allowed now.  Also, they did not produce many sales anyway.

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             Susana Sposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             Agree with you. I experimented with amazon UK affiliate links and had them on most of my hubs for a good 6 months. I made about 4 sales, compared to thousands from Amazon.com.
             
             Not worth it *on this site*.

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                IzzyMposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                I only add UK Amazon links to products that are only sold in the Uk and Europe. For example, I have a review on a certain product that is actually US-made, but not sold on either Amazon or eBay.com, which I was shocked to realise after I'd written the hub.
                So I added a link to AmazonUk, and have made 4 sales I think. Quite low considering the hits this hub gets. Then again, HP ads carry a nice big picture link to the same product on AmazonUK. Don't know who gets the commission, but it isn't me.

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    Mark Leesposted 11 years ago

    Regardless of the amount of traffic I will stick to UK English. If all the UK based writers pander for the American audience then UK English will soon disappear.

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    IzzyMposted 11 years ago

    I think it's worth noting that the rest of the english-speaking world use English English, I think. Canada and Australia mainly, plus many ESL countries.
    So both spellings are perfectly acceptable. Main audience is still the US though.

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