Quote:
Originally Posted by Luke King
As a child I was taught to spell program, programme, but the Australian English has now dropped the older spelling.
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British English has kept both forms. A computer runs a program, but you watch a programme on TV.
I should at this point mention again that wonderful Dialecticon website.
http://www.chaucery.com/fun/dialecticon/
And it seems that (unsurprisingly) you're right about Australian usage. Checking Dialecticon for "television programme" and "television program" shows the program to be used overwhelmingly in US, Canada and Australia, but programme still the norm in the UK.
Canada, Australia and UK still use theatre instead of theater, and checking for "theatre programme" against "theatre program" again shows that only in the UK is programme the norm. (Although I see that that some Australians (21%) still say programme at the theatre.)
Not that this says much about what one should do in a book. I prefer to read books with the words chosen by the author, but I don't mind the spellings changed to my preference (British English). So if it's a novel by an American , I don't want faucet changed to tap, or sidewalk to pavement, but I don't mind if color is changed to colour.
This is what publishers should be doing to keep their markets in ebooks. Not with legal restrictions, but with editing choices. Unless, of course, they think that readers might not want to buy books advertised as "localised edition", and would rather buy the original words as the author wrote them?