[tei-council] Standardi[s|z]ation

[Lou Burnard]

Michael Quinnion is good on this, (as on many other things)

  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ise1.htm

The -IZE suffix only applize to words which (etymologically speaking) 
come to use from a Latinized version of a Greek suffix. That's the 
rationale given by the OED anyway.

I don't think we should be guided by "instinct" here. Look em up.


On 25/02/12 18:18, Martin Holmes wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> One of Jens's excellent proofing reports suggests that we standardize
> spellings ending in -ise/-ize. I'm inclined to agree, and with -ise
> looking a bit beleaguered these days, I think it should be -ize. Lou
> agrees, on the ticket.
>
> So I ran this regex to see what we have:
>
> is((e[d|s]*)|(ing))\b
>
> It found 1529 instances, most of which aren't relevant ("otherwise",
> "raise" etc.). But amongst those which are, they don't all seem clear
> cut to me, though. I think these are uncontroversial:
>
> standardise
> normalise
> capitalise
> specialise
> summarise
> computerise
> italicise
> recognise
> regularise
> categorise
>
> But what about these? I feel instinctively less happy with changing
> these to z, for some reason:
>
> harmonise
> compromise
> analyse
> exercise
> utilise
>
> and I think these cannot be changed to z, even though, in many cases,
> variants with z are attested:
>
> comprise
> revise
> devise
> advise
> excise
>
> So what do your instincts tell you about these? Should we basically make
> a list of words which should use z, and put it in our style guide?
>
> Making the changes will be a significant job, because there are
> instances of similar words in French that mustn't be changed ("utilise",
> for instance). I think it'll best be done with XSLT (which can be
> language-aware, and ignore the French) and some very precise regexes.
>
> Cheers,
> Martin