Commonwealth English/Talk

The main problem I think we have here is the fact that we are talking about two different things. "Written English" and "Spoken English"

First there are two different written or orthographical systems used in the world, and as far as I can tell the standard terms for these are "American English" and "British English". Now as an Australian that irritates me, but the two terms have support in EVERY major reference source (OED, American Heritage, Fowlers Usage). The only exception I have found is one source (I forget which one, but I can look it up) refers to them as "American" and "Traditional" orthographies, and I don't think that will be popular with anyone.

Then there are spoken variants, and I fail to see why there should be any collective term for all of them - they are all unique in one way or another, and the safest way to handle it is as we have done - by simply defaulting to geography.

I propse that we dispense with the terms "International English" and "Commonwealth English" (except as cross reference terms to the terms used in the computer industry) and standardise on the following: "American Written English" and "British Written English"