At the risk of being accused of picking on Chandila Fernando, I do have a couple of comments now that shiny version of his website has finally been published.
1) Now it has been launched, what is the point of the holding page? If it at least had a sign up form that would be something. As it stands it just makes the content another click away. Does no-one worry about bounce rates these days?
2) When will the UK English version be made available? I’m sure proposes to “decentralize” and “modernize” will go down well with an American audience but over here we call them spelling mistakes.
3) Why is it that whenever you point your mouse on the Libby Bird, it flies away? That isn’t just gimmicky, it’s annoying.
4) For all this talk about the party having a confusing brand, which brand will Fernando finally settle on? On the front page alone we have “Modernize, Streamline, Decentralize” and “The Troubleshooter: the activist, on your side, to turn it around.” Click on “About Chandila” and we get three more adjectives “Energy, Leadership, Enthusiasm.” Click on “Manifesto” and it becomes “The Fresh Face, New Ideas, Serious.” These are all very nice words, but how does this amount to a candidate that really knows what he’s talking about when it comes to branding?
5) If you’re going to launch a website days late, you ought to make sure everything is ready. Having an empty “Events” page and “coming soon” on the “Get Involved” page is pretty dire.
I know I’m open to the accusation of being mean here but if you are really trying to sell yourself on your professionalism, you really do need to get your ducks in a row.
I use “ise” myself, but point 2) is a little more complicated than you suggest:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ise1.htm
I shall still be votin for Ros, mind you.
I realise I am guilty of oversimplification but the harshness of “-ize” sets my teeth on edge.
Ah, nice that Jonathan got there first, with the whole “-ize isn’t necessarily American”
I’d be more worried that the photos on the inside of the site seem to be of a different guy to the photos on the splash page.
It’s not just that the “-ize” is not just American, it is that “-ise” is deprecated even by the OED as being both phonetically and etymologically incorrect.
One might expect pro-European folk I suppose to warm to the more French “-ise” but that doesn’t make it any the more correct..:)
Mea culpa, mea culpa. That’s me told, although if you start choosing the spelling of words based on etymology and phonetics, where will you end? (Doubt? Edinburgh? And why not desentralize?).
The gf tells me that Inspector Morse hated ‘-ize’ so I suppose it boils down to which Oxfordian institution you prefer.
Can’t we all just be gentlemen and let HotForWords decide?
Dear oh Dear how petty can one get – and how wrong on the pettiness.
It has long been accepted that the spelling of “ise” or “ize” is a matter of choice.
The Oxford University Press, publishers of many dictionaries and books on the English language, and the Cambridge University Press, publishers of the Encyclopedia Britannica, use “ize”.
Even the Times Literary Supplement prints “ize” spelling not only in contributions from American writers, but throughout the entire magazine. And you will find that most company Web sites use “ize” spelling – though this is by no means a hard and fast rule.
You are just plain wrong on this James and does you no credit to get that petty.
Hold on a minute. Arguing about point 2 is fair enough, but what about points 1, 3, 4 and 5?
I have to check my spellings in the dictionary frequently. I can confirm the OED accepts both but “-ize” is considered to be more english than american.
Mr Graham complains about Chandila’s image but has he considered his own?
I’m not standing for Party President on a platform of being a professional who is capable of sorting out the party’s image. I have nothing to prove.
But yes, I have an image and it suits my purposes very well indeed, thank you.
I take it from your silence that you accept points 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all valid points then? I’ll take 4 out of 5 any day.
Maybe it’s a firefox or cross browser thing, but this page is particularly amusing – http://d155621.u39.ceylonnet.com/news.php?news_id=4
Seems the results of the brainstorming session were reasonably minimal then…
I noticed that too but I was being very good and not drawing people’s attention to it.