* Book Building - Dialect Preference for English

[KFN]

I’ve noted that reports use British spelling of some words.

Is there a switch to change to American spelling, or am going to tell my readers to “just get over it”!

[ColeValleyGirl]

If it's worth the effort to you, you could develop an American language pack...

[tatewise]

Could you identify which words, as it may be possible to customise them.
e.g. If they are derived from Fact Type Sentence Templates then you can probably change them.

[fhtess65]

Now you know how Canadians who use British spelling (which is most of us) feel when using software developed in the US that defaults to US spelling

However, I do see your point, as said US software often does include the option to use British spelling. Not sure CP has considered offering that. I always export any reports to a word processor anyway, so would just use the spellchecker in this case, or search/replace.

Others will likely have other suggestions to help with this issue.

I’ve noted that reports use British spelling of some words.

Is there a switch to change to American spelling, or am going to tell my readers to “just get over it”!

[KFN]

However, I do see your point, as said US software often does include the option to use British spelling. Not sure CP has considered offering that. I always export any reports to a word processor anyway, so would just use the spellchecker in this case, or search/replace.

How well does exporting to a word processor work for you? I have MS-Word and I find that images in Books are routinely misplaced from their location in the FH build. Do you have any tricks that you would like to pass along?

[tatewise]

KFN, I think you missed my earlier request. Could you please identify exactly which words are giving you a problem and where they appear in Reports as it may be possible to fix them without a Language Pack or a word-procesor.

[KFN]

KFN, I think you missed my earlier request. Could you please identify exactly which words are giving you a problem and where they appear in Reports as it may be possible to fix them without a Language Pack or a word-procesor.

I’m just starting to play with the Book Building process so the only word that jumped out was “Naturalization”. I’m suspecting more will happen as I experiment with various options and reports, so I can’t give a list, I was just hoping to get ahead of any issues by doing the obvious of “just flip this switch”!

[tatewise]

I'm afraid there currently is no "flip switch" but I suspect most words will only need a minor customisation.
Presumably, you would prefer Naturalization with a z rather than an s.
In Tools > Fact Types..., select the Naturalisation Event and click Edit...
Then in the Label: and Abbreviation: and Sentence Template: boxes replace s with z.

That adjusts the Naturalization event everywhere it appears in the Property Box, Reports, Diagrams, etc.
It is just possible that when a new version of FH is installed such customisations could be upset.
There are two solutions to that...
1) Make a backup of those Fact Set definitions to be restored after an FH update.
2) Create an American Fact Set to hold a copy of the Standard Fact Set definitions but with American spellings and give it higher precedence than the Standard Fact Set. This was a recommended technique before Language Packs were available and is still sometimes an easier solution.

[fhtess65]

I generally don't include pictures for basic books, so for me, a word processor works just fine. I don't use Word, but Atlantis Word Processor. If I was to create a proper book (I generally publish to my blog and include images there), I'd still not include the pictures, export to rtf, edit the text, and then use a layout program to insert images. I'm a long way off from that at this point - just writing a weekly blog post and publishing it is challenge enough.

So sorry, no tricks.

However, I do see your point, as said US software often does include the option to use British spelling. Not sure CP has considered offering that. I always export any reports to a word processor anyway, so would just use the spellchecker in this case, or search/replace.

How well does exporting to a word processor work for you? I have MS-Word and I find that images in Books are routinely misplaced from their location in the FH build. Do you have any tricks that you would like to pass along?

[Mark1834]

There is a flip-switch of sorts in Tools > Preferences > International, where the Display Language can be flipped between UK and US English. However, it's not clear how far that affects what the user sees. The only difference I noticed was changing between Color and Colour in the Preferences > Display menu, but there are probably others.

If CP are serious about expanding their US market at the expense of RM and FTM, it might be worth their while making it a more global change throughout the app.

[tatewise]

The Help says it affects "menus, labels, messages, etc, within the program" but that seems to exclude Fact Set definitions, Reports, Diagrams, Books, and date formats ('dd mmm yyyy' versus 'mmm dd yyyy').

[Mark1834]

I had a quick read through of the Standard Fact Set file, and the only words that I noticed were naturalised/...ized and baptised/...ized, so a US fact set will be easy enough to do, and certainly easier than wrestling with creating a Language Pack.

I was inconsistent with the Ancestry sync plugin on FHUG, but tidied it up for the store to use ...ize throughout, as that is the original form and acceptable on both sides of the Atlantic, whereas I’m told that ...ise definitely looks odd to US readers.