Editing International English (section)

=== Many Englishes ===
{{See also|British English|American English|Canadian English|Australian English}}
Many difficult choices must be made if further standardization of English is pursued. These include whether to adopt a current standard or move towards a more neutral, but artificial one. A true International English might supplant both current American and British English as a variety of English for international communication, leaving these as local dialects, or would rise from a merger of General American and standard British English with admixture of other varieties of English and would generally replace all these varieties of English.
<blockquote>We may, in due course, all need to be in control of two standard Englishes—the one which gives us our national and local identity, and the other which puts us in touch with the rest of the human race. In effect, we may all need to become bilingual in our own language. —&nbsp;David Crystal (1988: p.&nbsp;265)</blockquote>
This is the situation long faced by many users of English who possess a "non-standard" dialect of English as their birth tongue but have also learned to write (and perhaps also speak) a more standard dialect. (This phenomenon is known in linguistics as ''[[diglossia]]''.) Many academics often publish material in journals requiring different varieties of English and change style and spellings as necessary without great difficulty.

As far as spelling is concerned, the differences between American and British usage became noticeable due to the first influential [[lexicographers]] (dictionary writers) on each side of the Atlantic. [[Samuel Johnson]]'s dictionary of 1755 greatly favoured Norman-influenced spellings such as ''centre'' and ''colour''; on the other hand, [[Noah Webster]]'s first guide to American spelling, published in 1783, preferred spellings like ''center'' and the Latinate ''color''. The difference in strategy and philosophy of Johnson and Webster are largely responsible for the main division in English spelling that exists today.  However, these differences are extremely minor. Spelling is but a small part of the differences between [[dialects]] of English, and may not even reflect dialect differences at all (except in phonetically spelled dialogue). International English refers to much more than an agreed spelling pattern.