Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk - fact or fiction... I swear I saw him saying on U tube saying that the ww eleven teacher thing happened. Can't find it of course. But this is one chap I've paid over and over again to sit in on his talks. What a guy. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOs-V4pFsJc More - remove the space... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 8r1DnUxAAMM PBS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= qSyrLvQq89E
Current published trends: https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...tart=1940&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3
The official British terminology is the Second World War and First World War, which replaced the term Great War once we had a second. These are the terms used by the official historians, Historic England, Imperial War Museum, Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the National Archive. The BBC uses a mixture of Second World War and WWII. The UK's Veterans agency refers to World War 2 We had an educational adviser in the Royal British Legion who was really annoyed by any reference to WW1 and WW2 and would go through any handouts correcting these terms.
I've tried to use "Second World World" in preference to WW2, but if you want to write something like... 2ndWW ... WW2 seems preferable - at least to that. World War Eleven too, as mentioned... Seems eventually possible one day :-(
If handwritten, I like WWII because the Roman numerals are clear. Very few fonts are that way. Thus typed I much prefer WW2. If written out, I prefer World War Two. I dislike the terminology First or Second World War, because the First World War and the first world war aren't necessarily the same war. (Seven Years War and American Revolution are often described as world wars due to fighting in Europe, Americas, and India).