I see this problem occasionally when Americans use the experience review system on BME, but still it always surprises me how many react rather violently when they see non-American spelling (and how unaware many are that there even is such a thing). For those totally in the dark on this, America uses a “simplified” version of English with dropped letters and more phonetic spelling, with the occasional garbling, in comparison to most other English speaking nations… As a Canadian I'm comfortable — and accepting — of both, as Canada tends to be permissive of either spelling.
In the latest BME writer applicant's piece, at least according to my dictionary and spell checker, there isn't a single spelling mistake, although there are I think two words with British spelling… And I guess that's unacceptable to some people judging by the feedback from some of the readers:
"glaring spelling errors and i lost my interest in the first paragraph.""don't hire someone who won't even bother to use a spell check."
"I learned a lot from it but the spelling mistakes really took away from it."
Americans, let me make it quite clear: I am considering people from all over the world for this position. You may not like it, but not all of them are Americans. You're going to have to deal with that, as difficult as it may be for your egos. The world is a big place with a lot of different people in it.
That said, I'm pretty sure that some of the vitriol in the comments is due to people's general dislike of vegans. That's actually something that I'd hoped the article could get into a little deeper… It's really surprising how hostile the average meat eater gets when they find out that someone is vegan. On top of the obvious, decent people think nothing of cracking jokes about it or even just flaunting as much meat paraphernalia as possible — so not only does a vegan with self-identifying tattoos have to deal with all the prejudices of people who hate tattoos, but also with those from people who simply feel threatened around vegetarians. Thus many of those interviewed asked to have their names changed…
Anyway, it's interesting because I think I've gotten the least productive feedback from readers on this article of the three posted so far because of both the subject and the “unamerican” origin.
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