One of the details you should be aware of when writing your manuscript for a scientific journal is differences in British or American spelling for common words. This is a particular issue here in Canada, where our home spelling is British, but we are heavily influenced by American use. Journals will (almost) always specify what they want in the Instructions to Authors, but you should start thinking about this early. You won’t get your paper rejected for this oversight, but proper spelling is on every editor’s checklist.
Typical American spelling uses fewer letters in some critical words like color, flavor, labor (colour, flavour, labour is British). Some words ending in -er, like centre, in American spelling, end in -re in British spelling (centre). British spellers end words like defence and licence in -ce, while Americans will write the same words with -se at the end. I could go on, but there are a lot of rules and some exceptions. One trick is to trust your word processor. If it is set to correct for British English, then it will flag all of the words for which there are distinct British spellings, but you’ve used the American form. And vice versa (but that’s latin).
John at ProofreadCanada