British or American?

[ellarien]

I'm in the throes of revising a paper for a journal whose editors are happy with either British or American spelling, but not both in the same piece. I had to make a decision between color and colour, and suddenly realized I wasn't sure which one I went for in the first place. I think it's American, due to the presence of an 'artifact', where in my unperturbed state I would have had 'artefact', but I'm not entirely sure I've got the polarity of that argument right.

I am also entirely bemused by the discussion next door about 'comma splices' and the British addiction to them. I'm not entirely sure what one of those is, but if it consists of using a comma to join two sentences that could otherwise stand alone I'm fairly sure that no-one ever taught me that that was correct. If a semicolon seems too formal, I'm more likely to go for an em-dash.

Comments

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Golly - I've never been aware that the British were any more addicted to comma splices than anyone else (except Victorians perhaps). I share your somewhat schizophrenic attitude to spelling, being not only an expat Brit myself, but expat to Canada, where we tend to waver indeterminately between British and American spelling officially anyway... We stick to our guns with things like colour, but I think we spell it artifact, too.