What's the best English for writing?

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Creativity and enthusiasm are the two most important factors when you are writing. However, perceived poor spelling and grammar can distract your readers unless you are a great writer and your readers are totally gripped by your writing.

Unfortunately, spelling and grammar may be perceived to be wrong - even when it isn't. The following are a couple of examples:

1. I used to work for an international company which was a merger of American and British companies. There were American and British departments that both wrote technical and training manuals.

Initially, there was a debate about whether British or American English should be used for writing the manuals. It was decided that British authors should write in British English and the Americans, in American English. Later, I was criticised for spelling "practice" two different ways: "practice" and "practise" in two different ways. What I had actually done was to use, what to me, was the grammatically correct "practice" as a noun and "practise" as a verb.

2. I posted a blog in which I summarised what I had "learnt" about a topic. A comment was posted saying that there is no such word as "learnt". Like "learned", "learnt" is a past participle of the verb "to learn".

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