For those applying to grad school in London....

[saraya90]

For those of your that are, or have applied to grad school in London, I have a question (probably a few). Do you write your statement of purpose with American english spelling or British english spelling? I would assume that since we speak the same language they would obviously understand, but what if they do not want to see American english spelling? The programs I am looking at and admission dept. don't specify this for native non british speakers, so should I play it safe with British english even tho it wouldn't be authentic on my part to please british administration, or should I just write it in American english?

Edited May 2, 2017 by saraya90

[guest56436]

You're overthinking this. Write it in British English. As for not being authentic...it's really a difference of adding the odd U here and there.

[Concordia]

Punctuation is also a little different-- mostly with how they handle quotation marks.  Cambridge has style guides online for some of their departments.

http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/pdfs/faculty-style-guide/at_download/file

Edited May 3, 2017 by Concordia

[CakeTea]

Don't worry about American English spelling. Adcoms accept it as they receive many applications from international applicants and academics write/publish in peer reviewed journals. Some academics spent stints in the US. 

[TakeruK]

I think you can do whatever you want. Don't worry about "authenticity" because academics have to write to conform to style guides anyways. For example, I generally use Canadian English (weird hybrid of American and British English) for most things without a style guide, including my homework assignments for grad classes here in the US. But I write in American English when submitting to US journals and British English when submitting to UK journals. My American colleagues also switch back and forth to conform to the style guide of their publisher as well. So it's not a matter of "authenticity" at all.