Quote:
Originally Posted by Alyssa Miranda
I see your dilemma, which may be due to Australian usage which prefers the added "s" in the ratio of 10 to 1, according to the article you cite. However that same article (in the graphs) shows that dropping the "s" is clearly in the ascendancy in Britain, as it has been in the U. S. for some time. This suggests that dropping the "s" is more forward-looking, as it were, but in any event I would choose one or the other, and not use both.
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Australia draws influences from both Britain and America, which can make for some confusion. My work in software development tends to side with American influences because the preponderance of interfaces use words like "color" and "initialize" and similar (misspellings
). In my writing I usually to side with British influences ... and yet with forward/forwards I find myself preferring to drop the "s" in most situations.
I am inclined to use your reasoning that dropping the "s" is in ascendancy in Britain as a reason to follow my existing preferences, and in those few places where the lack of "s" sounds awkward to my ear I'll rephrase to avoid it.
I think the advice to be consistent is probably good - that way I'll only be offending one set of readers and not all.