RaidenShogun

National varieties of English

Hello. In a recent edit, you changed one or more words or styles from one national variety of English to another. Because Wikipedia has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect national varieties of English in Wikipedia articles.

For a subject exclusively related to the United Kingdom (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. For something related to another English-speaking country, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, or Pakistan use the variety of English used there. For an international topic, use the form of English that the original author of the article used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to another, even if you don't normally use the version in which the article is written. Respect other people's versions of English. They, in turn, should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Wikipedia articles are written can be found in the Manual of Style. If you have any questions about this, you can ask me on my talk page or visit the help desk. Thank you. Hqb (talk) 07:30, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Uhm- What article are we talking about here? RaidenShogun (talk) 13:37, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

That would be Giuseppe Mazzini, specifically many of these edits. Don't worry about it; I just wanted to draw your attention to the guideline, since you seemed to be unaware of it. Happy editing! Hqb (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Uhm. Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician. Which variety should be preferred? RaidenShogun (talk) 09:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

The core of the MOS:RETAIN guideline is that you should follow the prevalent variety already used in the article, unless the subject matter has clear national ties to another. In particular, you should not "correct" spellings such as "colour" to "color" (or vice versa) if it's not for the purpose of bringing the bringing the article into consistence with a clearly established, or logically preferable, variety. In the case of the Mazzini article, the usage (outside of direct quotations, which should usually be retained verbatim) is arguably not fully consistent, but seems to overall favor British English (e.g., in the Biography section: "fervour", "practised", "travelled"). Also, all dates use the British/European DMY style.

Finally, although Mazzini was Italian, he actually lived in exile in London for many years, with no comparable connections to the U.S., so a case could be made that British spellings would be more appropriate for his article. But the main point is that, while you should not in general feel obligated to first figure out which variety an article is using before making any material contributions to it, you should also not unnecessarily change any existing text to a different variety. That goes not only for British vs. American English, but also for, e.g., citation styles. Hqb (talk) 15:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah... sure. :O RaidenShogun (talk) 12:29, 13 February 2022 (UTC)