Curious About UK Versus US Marketing

LOL - yes to us brits when I hear someone from the U.S say "niche" it sounds like something that needs to be scratched on your back!

I have always thought when I say the word "niche" in videos I help that people from the U.S know what I am talking about.

Also I say Ezine Articles like "Ezeen articles" as oppose to "Ezine articles" but that is just me pronouncing it wrong I think!

Chris

Yup, the whole 'nitch' issue really annoys me. New zealenders say 'nitch' as well. In the ENGLISH dictionary there is no such word as 'nitch'. Niche always has been and always should be pronounced 'neesh'.

I pronounce it as "neesh", too, because that's how it's pronounced in French, where I've been living from 2000-2011 (June), and the word derives from French. This may not be the right way to pronounce it in English, but if I can choose between "nitch" and "neesh", the latter fall more natural to me. It's pronounced in almost the same way in Danish, by the way (neeshe).

I meant "more than many English-speaking countries"; I'd guess that the UK is about the same or even slightly higher, but I don't know.

(Edited to add: UK government figures published on 31st August claim that 77% of UK households have internet access. I have no idea what the equivalent US figure is, though your population's about 5 times the size of ours, I think?).

I'd think that measuring by "numbers of English-speaking people", America's probably the top country, India's probably second, and then there'll be two or three other countries before you get to the UK? (I'm guessing this - I may be wrong!). There are countries such as Canada, Australia, South Africa (Ireland and New Zealand are much smaller?) and so on ... lots of the world is "English-speaking" and in many countries in which English-speakers are small minorities (India? Parts of Africa?? Russia???) they tend to be the very similar, overlapping, small minorities as those with internet connections and credit-cards or PayPal accounts? Potential customers, in other words? And although they may be small minorities when compared with their countries' overall populations, they're still huge numbers of people?

English is spoken and written throughout the Caribbean (typically with "British" spellings, I believe) and quite a bit in Central America too (typically with "US" spellings, probably?).

Hi Tiffany,

When I started out writing my newsletter, Kickstart, way back in 2001 (goodness, where did all those years go to?) I used UK spelling because that's where I'm from. It didn't occur to me that it would be an issue.

But as my list grew, and more and more Americans subscribed, my inbox became swamped with emails - some trying to be helpful and some just angry - from people in the US who genuinely thought that I was just a sloppy writer.

It seemed that many Americans - or at least the subsection who had subscribed to my newsletter - had no idea that 'other' spellings exist and took exception to someone (me) sending them emails with what they perceived to be so many mistakes in them.

I was very surprised that people felt so strongly about it and started asking why.

The general response was that Americans are brought up to value spelling very highly. Spelling Bee competitions drum into US kids from an early age that good spelling is a measure of education. I don't know if that is true - spelling bees seem to be a mainly US thing.

Also, if the standard of spelling (from either side of the Atlantic) on forums is anything to go by this may no longer be the case.

In addition, it was pointed out to me (by my many US friends) that a lot of Americans have an ingrained attitude that 'if it is American it is good, if it from anywhere else it is suspect.'

So to reduce the flood of complaints I started to spellcheck my newsletters in US English, and gradually became so used to writing the US way that it is now second nature.

From several dozen complaints a week it dropped to zero. Oddly, although I used US spelling, I continued to use UK idiom - and didn't bother to replace words like 'tap' with 'faucet'. This didn't pose a problem. In fact, I started getting emails from Americans saying how they enjoyed reading English phrases.

So it seems that spelling is the big issue and not the specific words used.

So for the last 1200 or so editions of Kickstart - around 2 million words I guess - US spelling has predominated.

And guess how many complaints I've had from UK readers about my 'misspelling' of words?

One. And that was sent in tongue in cheek!

I think the reason is that readers from the rest of the world are well aware of American spelling and have, in general, become almost blind to them.

If I were to write a book aimed purely at the UK market, of course I would make more use of the u and s keys (odd that the US has so much issue with those letters!) and double up on the odd consonant where necessary. But for an International audience, US spelling is the best bet - if only to keep the number of complaints to a minimum.

Martin

P.S. Pronounciation is another thing completely. Nitch, like the word it rhymes with, is just plain irritating!

US Dollars are the currency of the internet.

Even in my "UK-only" niche, all prices of all products are given in dollars only, and British people have absolutely no problem with at, at all: British people buying anything digital online (unless perhaps from a UK-only retailer such as UK-Amazon) expect the prices to be in dollars. We know it'll typically cost us a fraction more on conversion-rates when we pay by credit-card or PayPal.

As discussed here in quite some detail only a couple of weeks ago ....

Now that's a different matter. When communicating one on one it would be silly to write in American to someone from the UK - if nothing else out of common courtesy.

So if I know for sure that a subscriber who has written to me personally is from the UK I will also use British English in my reply.

But you can't take that thinking too far. For example, I have a lot of Aussies who write to me and Australian English - at least from an idiom point of view - is a whole different ballgame. I wouldn't presume to try to 'become' Aussie in my writing if I was replying and think I'd look rather silly if I did try!

Martin