Re: Tram number founts [Was: WANTED]
  Prescott

The point I'm making is that there always was an Australian version of
English that sits between the English one and the American one. Australian
English always had a mixture of spellings from both - and both were
considered acceptable. Like its tramways, Australian spelling tended
towards the American way for a very long time, back to the 19th century
and, I vaguely recall in the case of the Melbourne Age, even up to the
1990s.

There are relics of traditional Australian spelling preserved in such names
as the Australian Labor Party and South Australia's harbours, e.g. Victor
Harbor, Outer Harbor etc. So those who insist that our "correct" spelling
is some "pure" English form are not correct. In any case, as Tony B says,
the argument is now pretty-much balanced out and settled (allowing for
continuing evolution of course) in the Macquarie Dictionary which draws on
elements of both English and American (i.e. traditional Australian) usage
and is the authority we should be using to speak and spell Australian!

https://tdu.to/i/44917

Tony P

On Saturday, 12 May 2018 16:18:24 UTC+10, Tram Gunzle wrote:
>

> Thanks Andrew -

>

> It wasn't only in earlier days that sign-writers applied numbers and logos

> to the trams - from examining photos of Adelaide trams, it is obvious that

> ALL numbers were hand-painted, and of two styles with at least two or three

> different heights used. Norm Cross relates that even into the latter days

> of the M&MTB that the sign-writer would be used to get a freshly painted

> tram back on the road when transfers/decals had run-out. As for the

> Met/Metropolitan Transit numbers, they are a common Sans Serif font of the

> Helvetica 'family', but even then it came in two varieties - made obvious

> when a tram was partly-renumbered.

>

>

> Also thank you Matthew -

>

> Do the drawings at STM describe the class letters and the white numbers ?

>

> How 'low-res' are the scans, and what exactly do you count as 'small' ?

>

> From photographs that appear in TDU, the white numbers on restored Sydney

> trams are significantly different to those on unrestored cars.

>

>

> And last but not least, thank you Tony -

>

> I see your point, and as 'font' has become entrenched within our culture I

> don't see it being changed back to 'fount' any time soon. However, having

> been a young 'victim' of Americanised English (TV, Hollywood), I now do my

> best to speak and spell correctly; no matter how many people say/spell

> words a certain way, that is not a valid argument that they are right. (cf.

> recent discussion on FREEmantle vs. FREmantle). The 'Grammarist' is an

> American website, and therefore (to paraphrase the late Douglas Adams) I

> would trust it about as far as I could comfortably spit a live rat.

>

>

> Cheers,

>

> X=X=X

>

>

>

>

>

>