Standard English - статья на английском языке

The degree of acceptance of a single standard of English throughout the world, across a multiplicity of political and social systems, is a truly remarkable phenomenon: the more so since the extent of the uniformity involved has, if anything, increased in the present century. Uniformity is greatest in what is from most viewpoints the relatively unimportant matter of spelling. Although printing houses in all English-speaking countries retain a tiny area of individual decision (some preferring -ise and others -ize in words like realise; some preferring judgment and others judgement; etc), there is basically a single system with two minor subsystems. The one is the subsystem with British orientation (used in all English-speaking countries except the United States) with distinctive forms in only a small class of words, colour, centre, levelled, etc. The other is the American subsystem: color, center, leveled, etc. In Canada, the British subsystem is used for the most part, but some publishers (especially of popular material) follow the American subsystem and some a mixture (color but tentre). In the American Mid-West, some newspaper publishers (but not book publishers) use a few additional separate spellings such as thru for through.
In grammar and vocabulary, Standard English presents somewhat less of a monolithic character, but even so the world-wide agreement is extraordinary and — as has been suggested earlier — seems actually to be increasing under the impact of closer world communication and the spread of identical culture, both material and non-material. The uniformity is especially close in neutral of formal styles of written English on subject matter not of obviously localized interest: in such circumstances one can frequently go on for page after page without encountering a feature which would identify the English as belonging to one of the national standards.
(From "A University Grammar of English" by R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik)