Use American english spelling

[aisberg]

Proposal

The current specification uses a mix of American and British spelling (e.g. ‘organisation’ and ‘license’), which needs to be addressed. I propose to change the spelling to be American throughout the specification and documentation.

The American spelling is the more widely used by not just for software, but for hardware platforms as well. To give some examples of hardware(-ish) platforms that employ American spelling:

• OSHWA (https://certification.oshwa.org)
• Wikifactory (https://wikifactory.com/) [though their terms of service is an inconsistent mix]
• Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com)
• Open Hardware Observatory (https://en.oho.wiki/)
• Instructables (https://www.instructables.com)
• GitHub (https://github.com)
• GiLab (https://gitlab.com)
• Adafruit Learn (https://learn.adafruit.com)
• Maker Pro (https://maker.pro)

In detail this means changing the following words:

• organisation (Br.) ➜ organization (Am.)
• standardise (Br.) ➜ standardize (Am.)
• centralise (Br.) ➜ centralize (Am.)

[max_w]

I agree that we should standerdis(z)e and American spelling makes sense given its wider adoption in other platforms and global standards bodies.

However, I see this as something that also needs to be consistent across all IOPA published specs and standards, so ideally we’ll also need to get the OKW and EC working groups to agree to this. Perhaps we need to develop a kind of IOPA “style guide” for the wider community?

@kaspar what are your thoughts re the EC spec?
@AnnaSera what are your thoughts re the OKW spec?

[kaspar]

No objections from me.

[AnnaSera]

This makes sense to me - no objections