Understood, but what about this: Before reading this article I didn't know about these rules. In Germany, we seem to follow the "british way". Couldn't resist..
So this argument seems only to hold if you a) assume that your readers are from the USA (or NA in general, no idea about Canada?) so that they value this style and b) that they don't just stumble upon your texts: They need to know where you're from.
This is necessary because it seems that a British person could easily claim that you're incompetent because you follow the exact rule we're talking about, but it doesn't apply locally for him. Okay, that's a bad example. AE and BE in writing is probably different enough so that someone speaking/writing BE will just chalk this up as another difference.
But here comes the rest of the world. We know about fall/autumn, colo[u]r and whatnot, but I'd say that it's not generally easy to say where some english text originates from, geographically/where the author lives. So if I cannot distinguish AE and BE with certainty, do I blame you or a BE person for handling this "wrong"?
Knowledgable readers who care will likely know both standards; at that point it's a matter of consistency (or, at the very least, never do something that breaks both sets of rules).
So this argument seems only to hold if you a) assume that your readers are from the USA (or NA in general, no idea about Canada?) so that they value this style and b) that they don't just stumble upon your texts: They need to know where you're from.
This is necessary because it seems that a British person could easily claim that you're incompetent because you follow the exact rule we're talking about, but it doesn't apply locally for him. Okay, that's a bad example. AE and BE in writing is probably different enough so that someone speaking/writing BE will just chalk this up as another difference.
But here comes the rest of the world. We know about fall/autumn, colo[u]r and whatnot, but I'd say that it's not generally easy to say where some english text originates from, geographically/where the author lives. So if I cannot distinguish AE and BE with certainty, do I blame you or a BE person for handling this "wrong"?