4 ms·

In reality of course the only difference is that it gets spelled "colour"... One thing I'm surprised to have seen only once is use of ¬ as an escape character,

by tom_ 7y ago

In reality of course the only difference is that it gets spelled "colour"... One thing I'm surprised to have seen only once is use of ¬ as an escape character, because it's so reliably unused for anything at all. (I noticed in the code that this program, which needless to say was written at a UK company, had no way of escaping ¬ itself, presumably because nobody had ever needed that.) £ also seems a bit underused, but it's fairly specifically the UK's currency symbol, so it's not obvious else you'd use it for. (But I suspect only UK keyboards have these chars, so it's probably no bad thing.)

petepete 7y ago
The funny spelling of centre always gets me too, it just looks so wrong! I can get used to writing words that end in ise as ize, and colour as color. But center, fiber, liter, etc just don't sit right.
- smnrchrds 7y ago
  It's just a matter of getting used to. I imagine these spellings do not evoke the same feeling in you, even though they are objectively following the same rule as centre and fibre: Maple not Mapel Cable not Cabel
  - uwagan 7y ago
    Able not Abel
- bradleyhb 7y ago
  Here’s my American perspective: Centre look and sounds like “cent-ruh” rather than the rolled out sounding of err sound to make “center”. Then again, how you say it is a bit different, too.
  - Symbiote 7y ago
    There are two "US" pronunciations on Wiktionary. The first is much closer to the British pronunciation, which (I think) is much more deserving of the spelling "centre" than the second "cener". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/center#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/center#Pronunciation
NikkiA 7y ago
¬ is one of the many 'not' symbols that has been used through history. As to why UK keyboards include it? Probably IBM, ¬ was the negation/not symbol in Z, it wouldn't surprise me if Hursley Park petitioned the rest of the company to ensure it was on the UK PC layout. (This Z: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_notation )
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  It makes a good EOL character to highlight trailing whitespace.
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    True, but unicode gives us ⏎ which is pretty unambiguous

by tom_ 7y ago

petepete 7y ago

The funny spelling of centre always gets me too, it just looks so wrong! I can get used to writing words that end in ise as ize, and colour as color. But center, fiber, liter, etc just don't sit right.

smnrchrds 7y ago
It's just a matter of getting used to. I imagine these spellings do not evoke the same feeling in you, even though they are objectively following the same rule as centre and fibre: Maple not Mapel Cable not Cabel
- uwagan 7y ago
  Able not Abel
bradleyhb 7y ago
Here’s my American perspective: Centre look and sounds like “cent-ruh” rather than the rolled out sounding of err sound to make “center”. Then again, how you say it is a bit different, too.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  There are two "US" pronunciations on Wiktionary. The first is much closer to the British pronunciation, which (I think) is much more deserving of the spelling "centre" than the second "cener". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/center#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/center#Pronunciation

NikkiA 7y ago

¬ is one of the many 'not' symbols that has been used through history. As to why UK keyboards include it? Probably IBM, ¬ was the negation/not symbol in Z, it wouldn't surprise me if Hursley Park petitioned the rest of the company to ensure it was on the UK PC layout. (This Z: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_notation )

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
It makes a good EOL character to highlight trailing whitespace.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  True, but unicode gives us ⏎ which is pretty unambiguous