Technical Writing and Communication

While preparing a technical draft, you must be sure about the usage of English. You can either choose ‘British‘ spelling of a word, or the ‘American‘ style of  the same.

For example you have to choose either “traveling” (American) or “travelling” (British) , “color” (American) or “colour” (British). In usage of these words both are valid, but the whole document must adapt to the validity. You can either choose American spelling or British spelling, but make sure you do it for the whole document, be it a research paper, business proposal, thesis, high level design document or a project specification.

While drafting a “User Manual” or “Help” however, it’s better to adapt to user or reader base. If users are mostly adapted to “American” spellings then better provide users with the similar taste.

Secret of Microsoft Word

If you are drafting your manuscript, then try to find out the software which helps you pick the right spelling. My favorite is still MS Word.

Select All (CTRL+A)
Go to Tool –> Set Language –> Language

From this option you can set the desired British or American Spelling for the entire draft. Wherever in your draft an incompatible spelling is found, it shall be marked red. You can just right click on the word and set the right spelling.

Remember “color” and “colour” are both right, it’s what you have chosen in MS Word that checks for the compatible spelling throughout.

Whether you choose “color” or “colour” is up to you, be sure your draft is good to go.