Tardis:Spelling

Our spelling policy derives from our manual of style's commitment to using British English. Put simply, it requires editors to use British spellings in most articles.

General guidelines
British spellings should always be employed in the main namespace. To give an exceptionally brief overview, this means using "our" in a lot of words, such as "colour" and "favour". It also means the general, but not universal, preference for the suffix "-ise" over "-ize".

As 30 May 2011, we have not, as a community, decided upon a single reference work that will be used to settle spelling disputes. Nevertheless, there are a number of online resources which do offer assistance in this regard:


 * The Oxford English Dictionary. The "mother" of all British English dictionaries, the OED has the disadvantage of not being free to everyone. Unless your local library subscribes to it, you'll have to pay to use it. Contact your librarian for info.
 * Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English has a reasonable reputation and is entirely free.
 * Oxforddictionaries.com, not to be confused with the Oxford English Dictionary, offers a good overview of the basic differences between American and British English.
 * Not exactly a spelling guide, but a useful phrase translation list
 * TravelFurther.net's American-British dictionary is a less academic guide to inter-English difficulties

None of the above resource are considered definitive by this site. They will likely guide you in the correct direction for proper British spelling. However, if and when we decide on a definitive dictionary for this site, spellings in that dictionary will supersede any given on the above sites.

Dictionaries native to your operating system
Some computer operating systems provide dictionaries by default. The OED is also available to Mac users as a native part of OS X, depending on their localisation settings. Mac users with American localisation have the OAD, instead — but even the OAD leverages its connection to the OED to give common British spellings. The OAD/OED has been standard in OS X since at least version 10.4.0.

Windows users are less fortunate, with no dictionary being a part of the core software at least through and including Windows 7. There is an OED version available for Win7, but it's not free.

Linux/UNIX users will find that their dictionary experience will usually be controlled behind the scenes by the dict executable directory. kdict and gdict are GUI expressions of dict, often included as a a part of the KDE and GNOME environments, but it is not known to what degree these are useful in settling questions of British spelling. Linux users are advised to go here for a good primer on the dict core that's still a part of most Linux environments.

Cross-platform possibilities
There are at least a couple of cross-platform dictionary possibilities, which are free:
 * WordWeb
 * StarDict

Both allow the user to load in whatever dictionaries they want, including the OED. Note that this wiki doesn't actually recommend these pieces of software, nor guarantee that you'll be able to use them, nor warrant that they'll be harmless to your computing environment. You must investigate them yourself and decide if you find them suitable.

Spell checking software
Because the differences between British and American English are much greater than simply -our and -ise, it's strongly recommended that you set your computer or browser's spell checker to British English whilst editing this wiki. Once that's done, you will likely be in compliance with our Manual of Style, unless you choose to simply ignore your spell checker.

If, for whatever reason, you don't have a British English spell checker available to you, then


 * A Firefox British English dictionary add-on

That said, it should be pointed out that spell checkers only point out to the user spellings that are known to be correct in a particular English variant. They do not tell you about alternate spellings that are equally valid. For instance, traveller is the primary British spelling, but traveler is a secondary spelling

A frequently noticed example of British English vs. American English involves words that end in "or" vs. "our". In British English, for example, colour is spelled with "our", whereas American English spells it "color". The former is the preferred style.

Another noticeable usage different between the use of British English on this wiki and American English is our use of Organisation rather than Organization.

In keeping with the aforementioned standard, dates should place the number first, e.g. 23rd November, not November 23.

If the title of an article differs in different varieties of English, the British, or English English, title should be the article title, with alternate names being used as redirects (for example, Target Novelization redirects to Target Novelisation).

Where applicable
This policy is applicable only in namespace 0 — that is, on a page whose name does not have a prefix like Tardis:, Category:, Forum:, Howling:, or Help:. It also applies where elements from other namespaces may appear in namespace 0. Thus, category names must use British spellings, because category names are visible in namespace 0. Also, the text of templates visible in the main namespace are subject to this policy.

It does not apply to your own user pages, the forums, talk pages, help pages, MediaWiki pages, template documentation, or even project pages like this one. As a rule of thumb, if the text can't be seen on a "normal" page, this policy doesn't apply to it.

As an example, it applies to Timeline, and to the text of Template:Timeline seen on, say, 1964, but not to the text seen on Template:Timeline/doc, nor on Howling:Timeline.

This policy is also not applicable in namespace 0 if the topic in question is spelled in a non-British way within the narrative of a story, or, if merchandise, on its actual packaging. Thus, if a Doctor Who novel were to refer to the American movie, The Color of Money, the American spelling of "color" should stand.