Writing for an international audience

Ideally, software and its documentation is localised (translated) into the languages that are used in the target markets. However, in many cases, it is not cost-effective do this. Even if the target markets are the English-speaking countries, differences exist between the way English is used in the USA, Britain and Australia for example, and it is easy to cause confusion. This article examines a few issues.

Most readers are likely to have no problem whether they see 'dialog box' or 'dialogue box' (assuming that they know what one is in the first place!). However, is '12/1/1999' the 12^th January or 1^st December? If your software is for an international market, avoid ambiguities that are caused by differences in language usage.

Consider readers who are not native English speakers. Many verbs in English consist of two or three words (known as phrasal and prepositional verbs). Often, they can be separated by a noun. These phrasal and prepositional verbs (which typically are of Anglo-Saxon origin) are sometimes a problem for people whose first language is not English; equivalent verbs that are often derived from Latin and Greek roots are often more easily understood. Here are a few examples of problematic verbs and their alternatives:

Multi-word verbs and equivalent one-word verbs
Do not use	Use
bring up (a menu)	obtain
end up with (a result)	results in
fill out (a form)	complete
put off (a decision)	delay
turn up (the volume)	increase

A counter-argument says that non-technical users (who are native English speakers) may feel more comfortable with words of Anglo-Saxon origin, because they are the words of everyday speech.

Finally (and not seriously!), if users break their keyboards after you have instructed them to 'hit the Enter key' when you mean 'press', who is to blame?