A Note Concerning British and American spellings

The two authors of this manual, Norm Cook and Rich Beal, are from the United States and England, respectively.　You may have noticed that these two countries have a long, confrontational history in terms of literary affairs.

As we both consider ourselves to be reasonably literary men, prideful of our own national literary heritage, neither of us would submit to adopting the spelling conventions of the other's home country in his own writings.　

As we both consider ourselves to be men of diplomacy and firm believers in international understanding and the brotherhood of nations, we decided that a compromise was better than any form of open confrontation to decide how to handle the situation.　

We briefly considered avoiding the use of any words which had nation-specific spellings.　But we quickly dismissed this idea when we realized we couldn't write about our favorite colors (our favourite colours), going to the theater (the theatre), fencing saber (fencing sabre), or how much we deplore the behavior of math teachers (the behaviour of maths teachers).　Also, any mention of things like Band-Aids (Elastoplasts (?!)) and White-Out (Tippex!) would similarly have to be omitted.　And that's just not cool!

We also considered translating this entire manual into THREE languages: British, American, AND Japanese.　But we just couldn't spare the web space.

Ultimately, we decided that for each article, whichever of us did the most initial writing would determine the spelling for that particular article.　Virtually every article on this site has been a collaborative effort between the two of us.　However, whichever of us laid down the most initial framework, or whoever was the first to actually type it up was the decider for that article.

Furthermore 3 of the articles in this manual were graciously submitted by colleagues of ours: Elementary Schools and the AET, Senior High Schools and the AET, and Explore the World Through Opportunities were written by Sheila Ryan-Hara, Angela Brennar, and Justin Dart, respectively.　We allowed those authors to use whichever spelling they felt most comfortable with.

We apologize if your country's literary history compels you to feel offended by the spelling-practices agreed upon by the authors of this website.　

"Using the twin guns of tact and diplomacy, we blasted our enemies with a fair compromise."

-Zap Brannigan, Futurama

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