American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences.

Historical origins

In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), whereas many American English spellings follow Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.

Webster was a strong proponent of spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. Many spelling changes proposed in the United States of America by Webster, himself, and in the early 20th century by the Simplified Spelling Board, never caught on. Among the advocates of spelling reform in England, the influences of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French) spellings of certain words proved to be decisive. Subsequent spelling adjustments in the United Kingdom had little effect on present-day American spellings, and vice-versa. In many cases American English deviated in the 19th century from mainstream British spelling, but it has also retained some older forms.

The spelling systems of Commonwealth countries and Ireland, for the most part, closely resemble the British system. In Canada and Australia, however, where much of the spelling is "British", many "American" spellings are also used. Additional information on Canadian and Australian spelling is provided throughout this article.

Spelling and pronunciation

In a few cases, essentially the same word has a different spelling which reflects a different pronunciation. However, in most cases, the pronunciations of the words is the same, or nearly so.

As well as the miscellaneous cases listed in the following table, the past tenses of some irregular verbs differ in both spelling and pronunciation, as with smelt (mainly in the U.K.) versus smelled (mainly American): see American and British English differences: Verb morphology.

U.K.	USA	Notes
aeroplane	airplane	Aeroplane, originally a French loanword, is the older spelling. According to the OED, "[a]irplane became the standard American term (replacing aeroplane) after this was adopted by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1916. Although A. Lloyd Jones recommended its adoption by the BBC in 1928, it has until recently been no more than an occasional form in British English." In the British National Corpus, aeroplane outnumbers airplane by more than 7:1 in the U.K. The case is similar for the British aerodrome and American airdrome, although both of these terms are now obsolete. The prefixes aero- and air- both mean air, with the first coming from the Ancient Greek word ἀήρ (āēr). Thus, the prefix appears in aeronautics, aerostatics, aerodynamics, aeronautical engineering, and so on, where the suffix is a Grecian word, while the second occurs (invariably) in aircraft, airport, airliner, airmail, etc. where the suffix is an English word. In Canada, airplane is used more commonly than aeroplane, although aeroplane is not unknown, especially in parts of French Canada (where the current French term is, avion—aéroplane designating in French 19th-century flying machines). In all of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, aerodrome is used merely as a technical term.
aluminium	aluminum	The spelling aluminium is the international standard in the sciences (IUPAC). The American spelling is nonetheless used by many American scientists. Humphry Davy, the element's discoverer, first proposed the name alumium, and then later aluminum. The name aluminium was finally adopted to conform with the -ium ending of metallic elements. Canada uses aluminum and Australia/New Zealand aluminium, according to their respective dictionaries.
arse	ass	In vulgar senses "buttocks" ("anus"/"wretch"); unrelated sense "donkey"/"idiot" is ass in both. Both forms are found in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ("ass" to a lesser extent in the latter two countries also as a "non-vulgar replacement", conversely "arse" may be used in North America as a "non-vulgar replacement").
behove	behoove
bogeyman	boogeyman	The spoken form is in the U.K., so that the American form, boogeyman , is reminiscent of the 1970s disco dancing "boogie" to the British ear.
carburettor	carburetor	; .
charivari	shivaree, charivari	In America, where both terms are mainly regional, charivari is usually pronounced as shivaree, which is also found in Canada and Cornwall, and is a corruption of the French word.
coupé	coupe	For a two-door car; the horse-drawn carriage is coupé in both (meaning "cut"); unrelated "cup"/"bowl" is always coupe. In the United States, the "e" is accented when it is used as a foreign word.
eyrie	aerie	This noun (not to be confused with the adjective eerie) rhymes with weary and hairy respectively. Both spellings and pronunciations occur in America.
fillet	fillet, filet	Meat or fish. Pronounced the French way (approximately) in America.
furore	furor	Furore is a late 18th-century Italian loan-word that replaced the Latinate form in the U.K. in the following century, and is usually pronounced with a voiced e. The Canadian the same as the American, and Australia has both.
grotty	grody	Clippings of grotesque; both are slang terms from the 1960s.
haulier	hauler	Haulage contractor; haulier is the older spelling.
jemmy	jimmy	In the sense "crowbar".
moustache	mustache	In America, according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, the British spelling is an also-ran, yet the pronunciation with second-syllable stress is a common variant. In Britain the second syllable is usually stressed.
mum(my)	mom(my)	Mother. Mom is sporadically regionally found in the U.K. (e.g. in West Midlands English). Some British dialects have mam, and this is often used in Northern English, Irish English, and Welsh English. In the American region of New England, especially in the case of the Boston accent, the British pronunciation of mum is often retained, while it is still spelled mom. In Canada, there are both mom and mum; Canadians often say mum and write mom. In Australia, mum is used.
naïvety	naïveté	The American spelling is from French, and American speakers generally approximate the French pronunciation as , whereas the British spelling is nativised, as also the pronunciation . In the U.K., naïveté is a minor variant, used about 20% of the time in the British National Corpus; in America, naivete and naiveté are marginal variants, and naivety is almost unattested.
pernickety	persnickety	Persnickety is a late 19th-century American alteration of the Scottish word pernickety.
quin	quint	Abbreviations of quintuplet.
scallywag	scalawag	In the United States (where the word originated, as scalawag), scallywag is not unknown.
speciality	specialty	In British English the standard usage is speciality, but specialty occurs in the field of medicine, and also as a legal term for a contract under seal. In Canada, specialty prevails. In Australia both are current.
titbit	tidbit

Latin-derived spellings

-our, -or

Most words ending in an unstressed -our in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia (e.g., colour, flavour, honour, neighbour, rumour, labour) end in -or in the United States (e.g., color, flavor, honor, neighbor, rumor, labor). Wherever the vowel is unreduced in pronunciation, this does not occur: contour, velour, paramour, troubadour, are spelled thus the same everywhere, with "contour" being an important technical term in mathematics and meteorology.Most words of this category derive from Latin non-agent nouns having nominative -or; the first such borrowings into English were from early Old French and the ending was -or or -ur.Webster's Third, p. 24a. After the Norman Conquest, the termination became -our in Anglo-French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation of words ending in -or, though color has been used occasionally in English since the fifteenth century. The -our ending was not only retained in English borrowings from Anglo-French, but also applied to earlier French borrowings. After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or termination; many words once ending in -our (for example, chancellour and governour) now end in -or everywhere. Many words of the -our/-or group do not have a Latin counterpart; for example, armo(u)r, behavio(u)r, harbo(u)r, neighbo(u)r; also arbor meaning "shelter", though senses "tree" and "tool" are always arbor, a false cognate of the other word. Some 16th and early 17th century British scholars indeed insisted that -or be used for words of Latin origin (e.g. color) and -our for French loans; but in many cases the etymology was not completely clear, and therefore some scholars advocated -or only and others -our only.

Webster's 1828 dictionary featured only -or and is generally given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the United States. By contrast, Dr Johnson's 1755 dictionary used the -our spelling for all words still so spelled in Britain, as well as for emperour, errour, governour, horrour, tenour, terrour, and tremour, where the u has since been dropped. Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform, but selected the version best-derived, as he saw it, from among the variations in his sources: he favoured French over Latin spellings because, as he put it, "the French generally supplied us." Those English speakers who began to move across the Atlantic would have taken these habits with them and H L Mencken makes the point that, "honor appears in the Declaration of Independence, but it seems to have got there rather by accident than by design. In Jefferson’s original draft it is spelled honour." Examples such as color, flavor, behavior, harbor, or neighbor scarcely appear in the Old Bailey's court records from the 17th and 18th century, whereas examples of their -our counterparts are numbered in thousands. One notable exception is honor: honor and honour were equally frequent down to the 17th century, Honor still is, in the U.K., the normal spelling as a person's name.

Derivatives and inflected forms. In derivatives and inflected forms of the -our/or words, in British usage the u is kept before English suffixes that are freely attachable to English words (neighbourhood, humourless, savoury) and suffixes of Greek or Latin origin that have been naturalized (favourite, honourable, behaviourism); before Latin suffixes that are not freely attachable to English words, the u can be dropped (honorific, honorist, vigorous, humorous, laborious, invigorate), can be either dropped or retained (colo(u)ration, colo(u)rise), or can be retained (colourist). In American usage, derivatives and inflected forms are built by simply adding the suffix in all environments (favorite, savory, etc.) since the u is absent to begin with.

Exceptions. American usage in most cases retains the u in the word glamour, which comes from Scots, not Latin or French. "Glamor" is occasionally used in imitation of the spelling reform of other -our words to -or. The adjective "glamorous" omits the first "u". Saviour is a somewhat common variant of savior in the United States. The British spelling is very common for "honour" (and "favour") in the stilted language of wedding invitations in the United States. The name of the Space Shuttle Endeavour has a u in it since this spacecraft was named for Captain James Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour.

The name of the herb savory is thus spelled everywhere, although the probably related adjective savo(u)ry, like savour, has a u in the U.K.. Honor (the name) and arbor (the tool) have -or in Britain, as mentioned above. As a general noun, rigour ( ) has a u in the U.K.; the medical term rigor (often ) does not. Words with the ending -irior, -erior or similar are spelled thus everywhere and have never had a "u", for example inferior or exterior.

Commonwealth usage. Commonwealth countries normally follow British usage. In Canada -or endings are not uncommon, particularly in the Prairie Provinces, though they are rarer in Eastern Canada. In Australia, -or terminations enjoyed some use in the 19th century, and now are sporadically found in some regions, usually in local and regional newspapers, though -our is almost universal. The name of the Australian Labor Party, founded in 1891, is a remnant of this trend. New Zealand English, while sharing some words and syntax with Australian English, follows British usage.

-re, -er

In British usage, some words of French, Latin, or Greek origin end with a consonant followed by -re, with the -re unstressed and . Most of these words have the ending -er in the United States. The difference is most common for words ending -bre or -tre: British spellings theatre, goitre, litre, lustre, mitre, nitre, reconnoitre, saltpetre, spectre, centre, titre; calibre, fibre, sabre, and sombre all have -er in American spelling. The ending -cre, as in acre, lucre, massacre, mediocre, is preserved in American English, to indicate the c is pronounced rather than . After other consonants, there are not many -re endings even in British English: louvre, manoeuvre after -v-; meagre, ogre after -g-; euchre, ochre, sepulchre after -ch-. In the United States, ogre and euchre are standard; manoeuvre and sepulchre are usually spelled as maneuver and sepulcher; and the other -re forms listed are less-used variants of the equivalent -er form.

The e preceding the r is retained in American-derived forms of nouns and verbs, for example, fibers, reconnoitered, centering, which are, naturally, fibres, reconnoitred and centring respectively in British usage. It is dropped for other inflections, for example, central, fibrous, spectral. However such dropping cannot be regarded as proof of an -re British spelling: for example, entry derives from enter, which has not been spelled entre for centuries.

The difference relates only to root words; -er rather than -re is universal as a suffix for agentive (reader, winner, user) and comparative (louder, nicer) forms. One consequence is the British distinction of meter for a measuring instrument from metre for the unit of length. However, while poetic metre is often -re, pentameter, hexameter, etc. are almost always -er.

Exceptions. Many other words have -er in British English. These include Germanic words like anger, mother, timber, water, and Romance words like danger, quarter, river. Some -er words, like many -re words, have a cognate in Modern French spelled with -re: among these are chapter, December, diameter, disaster, enter, letter, member, minister, monster, number, oyster, powder, proper, sober, tender, filter, parameter.

Theater is the prevailing American spelling used to refer to both the dramatic arts and buildings where stage performances and screenings of movies take place (i.e., "movie theaters"); for example, a national newspaper such as The New York Times uses theater throughout its "Theater", "Movies", and "Arts & Leisure" sections. In contrast, the spelling theatre appears in the names of many New York City theaters on Broadway (cf. Broadway theatre) (and elsewhere in the United States) and in listings and reviews in "The Theatre" section of The New Yorker. In 2003 the proposal of the American National Theatre (ANT), eventually to be founded and inaugurated in the fall of 2007, was referred to by the New York Times as the "American National Theater"; but the organization actually uses "re" in the spelling of its name. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Washington, D.C., or The Kennedy Center, features the more common American spelling theater in its references to The Eisenhower Theater, part of The Kennedy Center.

Some cinemas outside New York use the "theatre" spelling.

Many places across the United States have started using the two spellings differently. Theater is typically used to mean a movie theater, whereas theatre refers to an actual theatre for performing arts.

In rare instances, places in the United States have Centre in their names (e.g., Newton Centre, Massachusetts, and Rockville Centre, New York), named both before and after spelling reform, or as merely an affectation, and there are also a few cases of the use of Center in the United Kingdom (e.g., the Valley Centertainment in Sheffield, although this is in fact a portmanteau of the cent- of centre and -ertainment of entertainment).

For British accoutre(ment), the American practice varies: the Merriam-Webster Dictionary prefers the -re spelling, but the American Heritage Dictionary the -er spelling.

More recent French loanwords retain an -re spelling in American English. These are not exceptions when a French-style pronunciation is used ( rather than ), as with double-entendre, genre, or oeuvre. However, the unstressed pronunciation of an -er ending is used more or less frequently with some words, including cadre, macabre, maître d', Notre Dame, piastre, and timbre.

Commonwealth usage. The -re endings are mostly standard throughout the Commonwealth. The -er spellings are recognized as minor variants in Canada, due in part to American influences. Proper names, particularly names incorporating the word centre/center, are an occasional source of exceptions, such as, for example, Toronto's controversially-named Centerpoint Mall. However, -re generally prevails in Canada.

-ce, -se

Nouns ending in -ce with -se verb forms: American English and British English both retain the noun/verb distinction in advice / advise and device / devise, but American English has abandoned the distinction with licence / license and practice / practise (where the two words in each pair are homophones) that British spelling retains. American English uses practice and license for both meanings.

American English has kept the Anglo-French spelling for defense and offense, which are usually defence and offence in British English; similarly there are the American pretense and British pretence; but derivatives such as defensive, offensive, and pretension are always thus spelled in both systems.

Australian and Canadian usage generally follows British.

-xion, -ction

The spelling connexion is now rare in everyday British usage and is not used at all in America: the more common connection has become the standard internationally. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the older spelling is more etymologically conservative, since the word actually derives from Latin forms in -xio-. The American usage derives from Webster who discarded the -xion in favour of -ction by analogy with such verbs as connect.

Complexion (which comes from the stem complex) is standard and complection usually is not. However, the adjective complected (as in "dark-complected"), although sometimes objected to, can be used as an alternative to complexioned in the U.S., but is quite unknown in this sense in the UK, although there is an extremely rare usage to mean complicated (OED).

Greek spellings

-ise, -ize

American spelling accepts only -ize endings in most cases, such as organize, recognize, and realize. British usage accepts both -ize and the more French-looking -ise (organise, recognise, realise).The -ize spelling is preferred by some authoritative British sources including the Oxford English Dictionary—which lists the -ise form separately, as "a frequent spelling of -IZE...".Oxford English Dictionary "-ise¹" The OED firmly deprecates usage of "-ise" for words of Greek origin, stating, "[T]he suffix..., whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Gr[eek] - , L[atin] -izāre; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling in -iser should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic."

However in their less academic publications, including Fowler's Modern English Usage, Oxford Dictionaries now give prominence to the -ise suffix over -ize. The main work goes on to say "... some have used the spelling -ise in English, as in French, for all these words, and some prefer -ise in words formed in French or English from Latin elements, retaining -ize for those of Greek composition." Noah Webster rejected -ise for the same reasons. Despite these pronouncements, however, the -ize spelling is now rarely used in the UK in the mass media and newspapers, and is often incorrectly regarded as an Americanism. The Cambridge University Press, equal in authority to the Oxford institution, has long favored -ise.

The ratio between -ise and -ize stands at 3:2 in the British National Corpus. The OED spelling (which can be indicated by the registered IANA language tag en-GB-oed), and thus -ize, is used in many British-based academic publications, such as Nature, the Biochemical Journal and The Times Literary Supplement. In Australia and New Zealand -ise spellings strongly prevail; the Australian Macquarie Dictionary, among other sources, gives the -ise spelling first. The -ise form is preferred in Australian English at a ratio of about 3:1 according to the Macquarie Dictionary. Conversely, Canadian usage is essentially like American. Worldwide, -ize endings prevail in scientific writing and are commonly used by many international organizations. For example, "synthesize" is used in international chemical journals.

The same pattern applies to derivatives and inflections such as colonisation/colonization.

Some verbs ending in -ize or -ise do not derive from Greek - , and their endings are therefore not interchangeable; some verbs take the -z- form exclusively, for instance capsize, seize (except in the legal phrase to be seised of/to stand seised to), size and prize (only in the "appraise" sense), whereas others take only -s-: advertise, advise, apprise, arise, chastise, circumcise, incise, excise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, disguise, exercise, franchise, improvise, merchandise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise, and televise. Finally, the verb prise (meaning to force or lever) is spelled prize in the US and prise everywhere else, including Canada, although in North American English it is commonly replaced by pry, a back-formation from or alteration of prise.

-yse, -yze

The distribution of -yse and -yze endings, as in analyse / analyze, is different: the former is British English, but the latter is American. Thus, in British English analyse, catalyse, hydrolyse, and paralyse, but in American English analyze, catalyze, hydrolyze, and paralyze. However, analyse was commonly spelled analyze from the first—the spelling preferred by Samuel Johnson. This word, which came probably from the French analyser, on Greek analogy would have been analysize, from the French analysiser, from which analyser was formed by haplology. In Canada, -yze prevails, just as in the United States. In Australia and New Zealand, -yse stands alone. Unlike -ise/-ize, neither of the endings has any resemblance to the Greek original ending. The Greek verb from which the word (lusis) (and thus all its compound words) derives, is (luein).

-ogue, -og

Some words of Greek origin, a few of which derive from Greek λόγος or αγωγός, can end either in -ogue or in -og: analog(ue), catalog(ue), dialog(ue), demagog(ue), pedagog(ue), monolog(ue), homolog(ue), synagog(ue) etc. In the U.K. (and generally in the Commonwealth), the -ogue endings are the standard. In the U.S., catalog has a slight edge over catalogue (the inflected forms, cataloged and cataloging v catalogued and cataloguing); analog is standard for the adjective, but both analogue and analog are current for the noun; in all other cases the -gue endings strongly prevail, for example monologue, except for such expressions as dialog box in computing , which are also used in the U.K. Finally, in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia analogue is used, but just as in the U.S. analog has some currency as a technical term (e.g. in electronics, as in "analog electronics" as opposed to "digital electronics" and some video-game consoles might have an analog stick).

The dropping of the "ue" is mandatory in forming such related words as "analogy", "analogous", and "analogist".

Simplification of ae (æ) and oe (œ)

Many words are written with ae/æ or oe/œ in British English, but a single e in American English. The sound in question is or (or unstressed ). Examples (with non-American letter in bold): am'oeba, anaemia, anaesthesia, caesium, diarrhoea, gynaecology, haemophilia, leukaemia, oesophagus, oestrogen, orthopaedic, paediatric. Words where British usage varies include encyclopaedia, homoeopathy, mediaeval, and foetus (though the British medical community considers this variant to be unacceptable for the purposes of journal articles and the like, since the Latin spelling was actually fetus). In the American usage, aesthetics and archaeology usually prevail over esthetics and archeology, while oenology is a minor variant of enology.

The Encyclopædia Britannica retained its name's traditional spelling even after relocating to the U.S.A.

The Ancient Greek diphthongs <αι> and <οι> were transliterated into Latin as and . The ligatures æ and œ were introduced when the sounds became monophthongs, and later applied to words not of Greek origin, in both Latin (for example, cœli) and French (for example, œuvre). In English, which has imported words from all three languages, it is now usual to replace Æ/æ with Ae/ae and Œ/œ with Oe/oe. In many cases, the digraph has been reduced to a single e in all varieties of English: for example, oeconomics, praemium, and aenigma. In others, it is retained in all varieties: for example, phoenix, and usually subpoena. This is especially true of names: Caesar, Oedipus, Phoebe, etc. There is no reduction of Latin -ae plurals (e.g. larv'ae); nor where the digraph / does not result from the Greek-style ligature: for example, maelstrom, toe. The British form aeroplane is an instance (compare other aero- words such as aerosol). The now chiefly North American airplane is not a respelling but a recoining, modeled after airship and aircraft. The word airplane dates from 1907, at which time the prefix aero- was trisyllabic, often written aëro-.

Commonwealth usage

In Canada, e is usually preferred over oe and often over ae as well, just as in the neighboring United States. In Australia and elsewhere, the British usage prevails, but the spellings with just e are increasingly used. Manoeuvre is the only spelling in Australia, and the most common one in Canada, where maneuver and manoeuver are also sometimes found.

This shortening is natural, especially since the Canadian Forces in the air and on the oceans are frequently involved in joint maneuvers with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. In Canada, oe and ae are used occasionally in the academic and science communities.

Internationally, the American spelling is closer to the usage in a number of other languages using the Latin alphabet; . For instance, almost all Romance languages (which tend to have more phonemic spelling) lack the ae and oe spellings (a notable exception being in French), as do Swedish, Polish, and others, while Dutch uses them sometimes ("ae" is rare, but "oe" is the normal representation of the sound , while written "u" represents either the sound y or in IPA). The languages Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and some others retain the original ligatures. In German, through umlauts, is retained as its equivalent of the ligature, for when written without the umlaut. These words resemble the British usage (i.e. ä becomes ae and ö becomes oe). Similarly, Hungarian uses "é" as a replacement for "ae" (although it becomes "e" sometimes), and the special character "ő" (sometimes "ö") for "oe".

Compounds and hyphens

British English often prefers hyphenated compounds, such as counter-attack, whereas American English discourages the use of hyphens in compounds where there is no compelling reason, so counterattack is much more common. Many dictionaries do not point out such differences. Canadian and Australian usage is mixed, although Commonwealth writers generally hyphenate compounds of the form noun plus phrase (such as editor-in-chief). Commander-in-chief is dominant in all forms of English.

• any more or anymore: In sense "any longer", the single-word form is usual in North America and Australia but unusual elsewhere, at least in formal writing. Other senses always have the two-word form; thus Americans distinguish "I couldn't love you anymore [so I left you]" from "I couldn't love you any more [than I already do]". In Hong Kong English, any more is always two words.
• for ever or forever: Traditional British English usage makes a distinction between for ever, meaning for eternity (or a very long time into the future), as in "If you are waiting for income tax to be abolished you will probably have to wait for ever"; and forever, meaning continually, always, as in "They are forever arguing". In contemporary British usage, however, forever prevails in the "for eternity" sense as well, in spite of several style guides maintaining the distinction. American writers usually use forever in all senses.
• near by or nearby: Some British writers make the distinction between the adverbial near by, which is written as two words, as in, "No one was near by"; and the adjectival nearby, which is written as one, as in, "The nearby house". In American English, the one-word spelling is standard for both forms.

Doubled consonants

Doubled in British English

The final consonant of an English word is sometimes doubled in both American and British spelling when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel, for example strip/stripped, which prevents confusion with stripe/striped and shows the difference in pronunciation (see digraph). Generally, this occurs only when the word's final syllable is stressed and when it also ends with a single vowel followed by a single consonant. In British English, however, a final -l is often doubled even when the final syllable is unstressed. This exception is no longer usual in American English, apparently because of Noah Webster. The -ll- spellings are nevertheless still regarded as acceptable variants by both Merriam-Webster Collegiate and American Heritage dictionaries.

• The British English doubling is required for all inflections (-ed, -ing, -er, -est) and for the noun suffixes -er and -or. Therefore, the British English counsellor, cruellest, modelling, quarrelled, signalling, traveller, and travelling. Americans usually use counselor, cruelest, modeling, quarreled, signaling, traveler, traveling, etc.
  • parallel keeps a single -l- in British English, as in American English (paralleling, unparalleled), to avoid the unappealing cluster -llell-.

• • Words with two vowels before final l are also spelled with -ll- in British English before a suffix when the first vowel either acts as a consonant (equalling and initialled), but in the United States, (equaling or initialed), or belongs to a separate syllable (British fu•el•ling and di•alled; American fu•el•ing and di•aled)
    • British woollen is a further exception due to the double vowel (American: woolen). Also, wooly is accepted in American English though woolly dominates in both.
• Endings -ize/-ise, -ism, -ist, -ish usually do not double the l in British English: normalise, dualism, novelist, devilish
  • Exceptions: tranquillise; duellist, medallist, panellist, sometimes triallist in British English.
• For -ous, British English has a single l in scandalous and perilous, but the "ll" in marvellous and libellous.
• For -ee, British English has libellee.
• For -age British English has pupillage but vassalage.
• American English sometimes has an unstressed -ll-, as in the U.K., in some words where the root has -l. These are cases where the alteration occurs in the source language, which was often Latin. (Examples: bimetallism, cancellation, chancellor, crystallize, excellent, tonsillitis)
• But all forms of English have compelled, excelling, propelled, rebelling (notice the stress difference); revealing, fooling (note the double vowel before the l); and hurling (consonant before the l).
• Canadian and Australian English largely follow British usage.

Among consonants other than l, practice varies for some words, such as where the final syllable has secondary stress or an unreduced vowel. In the United States, the spellings kidnaped and worshiped, which were introduced by the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, are common. Kidnapped and worshipped, the only standard British spellings.

Miscellaneous:

• British calliper or caliper; American caliper.
• British jewellery; American jewelry. The standard pronunciations ( ) do not reflect this difference. According to Fowler, jewelry used to be the "rhetorical and poetic" spelling in the U.K. Canada has both, but jewellery is more often used. Likewise, the Commonwealth (including Canada) has jeweller and the United States has jeweler for a jewel(le)ry retailer.

Doubled in American English

Conversely, there are words where British writers prefer a single l and Americans usually use a double l. In American usage, the spelling of words is usually not changed when they form the main part (not prefix or suffix) of other words, especially in newly formed words and in words whose main part is in common use. Words exhibiting this spelling difference includewil(l)ful, skil(l)ful, thral(l)dom, appal(l), fulfil(l), fulfil(l)ment, enrol(l)ment, instal(l)ment. These words have monosyllabic cognates always written with -ll: will, skill, thrall, pall, fill, roll, stall, still. Cases where a single l nevertheless occurs in both American and British English include null→annul, annulment; till→until; and others where the connection is not transparent or the monosyllabic cognate is not in common use in American English (e.g. null is used mainly as a technical term in law, mathematics, and computer science).

In the U.K., ll is used occasionally in distil(l), instil(l), enrol(l), and enthral(l)ment, and often in enthral(l), all of which are always spelled this way in American usage. The former British spellings instal, fulness, and dulness are now quite rare. The Scottish tolbooth is cognate with toll booth, but it has a specific distinct sense.

In both American and British usages, words normally spelled -ll usually drop the second l when used as prefixes or suffixes, for example full→useful, handful; all→almighty, altogether; well→welfare, welcome; chill→chilblain.

The British fulfil and American fulfill are never fullfill or fullfil.

Dr Johnson wavered on this issue. His dictionary of 1755 lemmatizes distil and instill, downhil and uphill.

Dropped e

British English sometimes keeps silent e when adding suffixes where American English does not. Generally speaking, British English drops it in only some cases in which it is unnecessary to indicate pronunciation whereas American English only uses it where necessary.

• British prefers ageing, American usually aging (compare raging, ageism). For the noun or verb "route", British English often uses routeing;, but in America routing is used.(The military term rout forms routing everywhere.) However, all of these word form "router", whether used in the context of carpentry, data communications, or military. (e.g. "Attacus was the router of the Huns at ....")

Both forms of English retain the silent e in the words dyeing, singeing, and swingeing (in the sense of dye, singe, and swinge), to distinguish from dying, singing, swinging (in the sense of die, sing, and swing). In contrast, both bathe and the British verb bath both form bathing. Both forms of English vary for tinge and twinge; both prefer cringing, hinging, lunging, syringing.

• Before -able, British English prefers likeable, liveable, rateable, saleable, sizeable, unshakeable, where American practice prefers to drop the -e; but both British and American English prefer breathable, curable, datable, lovable, movable, notable, provable, quotable, scalable, solvable, usable, and those where the root is polysyllabic, like believable or decidable. Both forms of the language retain the silent e when it is necessary to preserve a soft c, ch, or g, such as in traceable, cacheable, changeable; both usually retain the "e" after -dge, as in knowledgeable, unbridgeable, and unabridgeable. ("These rights are unabridgeable.")
• Both abridgment and the more regular abridgement are current in America, only the latter in the U.K. Similarly for the word lodg(e)ment. Both judgment and judgement are in use interchangeablly everywhere, although the former prevails in America and the latter prevails in the U.K. except in the practice of law, where judgment is standard. The similar situation holds for abridgment. Both forms of English fledgling to fledgeling, but ridgeling to ridgling.
• The word "blue" always drops the "e" when forming "bluish".

Different spellings, different connotations

• artefact or artifact: In British usage, artefact is the main spelling and artifact a minor variant. In American English, artifact is the usual spelling. Canadians prefer artifact and Australians artefact, according to their respective dictionaries. Artefact reflects Arte-fact(um), the Latin source.
• dependant or dependent: British dictionaries distinguish between dependent (adjective) and dependant (noun). In the U.S., dependent is usual for both noun and adjective, notwithstanding that dependant is also an acceptable variant for the noun form in the US.
• disc or disk: Traditionally, disc used to be British and disk American. Both spellings are etymologically sound (Greek diskos, Latin discus), although disk is earlier. In computing, disc is used for optical discs (e.g. a CD, Compact Disc; DVD, Digital Versatile/Video Disc) while disk is used for products using magnetic storage (e.g. hard disk or floppy disks, also known as diskettes). For this limited application, these spellings are used in both the U.S. and the Commonwealth.
• enquiry or inquiry: According to Fowler, inquiry should be used in relation to a formal inquest, and enquiry to the act of questioning. Many (though not all) British writers maintain this distinction; the OED, on the other hand, lists inquiry and enquiry as equal alternatives, in that order. Some British dictionaries, such as Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, present the two spellings as interchangeable variants in the general sense, but prefer inquiry for the "formal inquest" sense. In the US, only inquiry is commonly used. In Australia, inquiry and enquiry are often interchangeable, but inquiry prevails in writing. Both are current in Canada, where enquiry is often associated with scholarly or intellectual research.
• ensure or insure: In the UK (and Australia), the word ensure (to make sure, to make certain) has a distinct meaning from the word insure (often followed by against – to guarantee or protect against, typically by means of an "insurance policy"). The distinction is only about a century old, and this helps explain why in (North) America ensure is just a variant of insure, more often than not. According to Merriam-Webster's usage notes, ensure and insure "are interchangeable in many contexts where they indicate the making certain or [making] inevitable of an outcome, but ensure may imply a virtual guarantee ensured the safety of the refugees>, while insure sometimes stresses the taking of necessary measures beforehand insure the success of the party>.
• insurance or assurance: In the business of risk transfer, AmE speakers will normally refer to life insurance or fire insurance, whereas BrE speakers will more commonly refer to life assurance or home assurance, although none of these uses are exclusive to North America or to the UK. Canadian and Australian speakers are more likely than US speakers to follow British convention, due possibly to British risk carriers having had a greater relative presence historically in Canada and Australia than in the US.
• matt or matte: In the UK, matt refers to a non-glossy surface, and matte to the motion-picture technique; in the US, matte covers both.
• programme or program: The British programme is a 19th-century French version of program. Program first appeared in Scotland in the 17th century and is the only spelling found in the US. The OED entry, written around 1908 and listing both spellings, said program was preferable, since it conformed to the usual representation of the Greek as in anagram, diagram, telegram etc. In British English, program is the common spelling for computer programs, but for other meanings programme is used. In Australia, program has been endorsed by government writing standards for all senses since the 1960s, although programme is also seen; see also the name of The Micallef Program. In Canada, program prevails, and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary makes no meaning-based distinction between it and programme. However, some Canadian government documents nevertheless use programme in all senses of the word - and also to match the spelling of the French equivalent.
• tonne or ton: in the U.K., the spelling tonne refers to the metric unit (1000 kilograms), whereas in the U.S. the same unit is referred to as a metric ton. The unqualified ton usually refers to the long ton (2,240 lb.) in the U.K., and to the short ton (2,000 lb.) in the U.S.

See also meter/metre, for which there is a British English distinction between these etymologically related forms with different meanings but the standardized American spelling is "meter" . The spelling used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures is "metre". This spelling is also the usual one in most English-speaking countries, but only the spelling "meter" is used in American English, and this is officially endorsed by the United States.

A few British publications prefer to use kilogramme for the metric unit of mass and gramme, but kilogram and gram are the more common spellings in British English and therefore listed first in British dictionaries. In the United States, the spellings are always kilogram/gram, and these are also used exclusively by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.

Telegramme is used in some places, but never in the United States, where it has always been simply a telegram.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Proper names formed as proper acronyms are often rendered in title case by Commonwealth writers, but usually as upper case by Americans: for example, Nasa / NASA or Unicef / UNICEF. This does not apply to most pure initialisms, such as U.S.A., NATO, IBM, or PRC (the People's Republic of China). However, it is occasionally done for some in the U.K., such as Pc (Police Constable).

In North America, PC already means either "personal computer" or "politically correct".

Contractions, where the final letter is present, are often written in British English without stops/periods (Mr, Mrs, Dr, St, Ave). Abbreviations where the final letter is not present generally do take stops/periods (such as vol., etc., i.e., ed.); British English shares this convention with the French: Mlle, Mme, Dr, Ste, but M. for Monsieur. In American and Canadian English, abbreviations like St., Ave., Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., and Jr., always require periods. Some initials are usually upper case in America but lower case in Britain: liter/litre and its compounds ("2 L or 25 mL" vs "2 l or 25 ml"); and ante meridiem and post meridiem (10 P.M. or 10 PM vs 10 p.m. or 10 pm).

Miscellaneous spelling differences

U.K.	U.S.	Remarks
adze	adze, adz	Adz is more common in the US.
annexe	annex	To annex is the verb in both British and American usage; however, when speaking of an annex(e) – the noun referring to an extension of a main building - not a military or political conquest, which would be an annexation - as in the Nazi German annexation of Austria in 1938. The root word is usually spelled with an -e at the end in the U.K., but in the U.S. it is not.
arse	ass	When referring to the animal, or a stupid person, ass is used in both. In America, "arse" is sometimes used as a minced oath.
axe	ax, axe	Both the noun and verb. (The word comes from Old English æx). In the US, "axe" sometimes refers to the weapon while "ax" refers to the tool, though both spellings are acceptable and commonly used.
camomile, chamomile	chamomile, camomile	In the U.K., according to the OED, "the spelling cha- is chiefly in pharmacy, after Latin; that with ca- is literary and popular". In the U.S. chamomile dominates in all senses. However, these are all obscure words in any case.
cheque	check	In banking. Hence pay cheque and paycheck. Accordingly, the North American term for what is known as a current account or cheque account in the U.K. is spelled chequing account in Canada and checking account in the U.S. Some American financial institutions, notably American Express, prefer cheque, but this is merely a trademarking affectation. The U.S. uses the spelling "cheque" when referring to "traveler's cheques".
chequer	checker	As In chequerboard/checkerboard, chequered/checkered flag, etc. In Canada as in the U.S. While "checker" is more common in the U.S., "exchequer" is used in the U.K.
chilli	chili	The original Mexican Spanish word is spelled chile. In Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, chile and chilli are given as also variants.
cipher, cypher	cipher	However, in cryptology, the words that are used in the U.S. are cypher, encypher, and cyphertext.
colour	color	With a 'U' is the original British spelling (also used in other Commonwealth nations such as Canada) and color is the only accepted American spelling. (Which makes using the HTML code "color" garnish many errors for those who use the British spelling)
cosy	cozy	In all senses (adjective, noun, verb).
doughnut	doughnut, donut	In the U.S., both are used with donut indicated as a variant of doughnut. In the U.K., donut is indicated as an American variant for doughnut.
draught	draft	British English usually uses draft for all senses as the verb; for a preliminary version of a document; for an order of payment (bank draft), and for military conscription (although this last meaning is not as common as in American English). It uses draught for drink from a cask (draught beer); for animals used for pulling heavy loads (draught horse); for a current of air; for a ship's minimum depth of water to float; and for the game draughts, known as checkers in America. It uses either draught or draft for a plan or sketch (but almost always draughtsman in this sense; a draftsman drafts legal documents). American English uses draft in all these cases, including draftsman (male or female) (although in regard to drinks, draught is sometimes found). Canada uses both systems; in Australia, draft is used for technical drawings, is accepted for the "current of air" meaning, and is preferred by professionals in the nautical sense. The pronunciation is always the same for all meanings within a dialect (RP , General American ). The spelling draught is older; draft appeared first in the late 16th century.
encyclopaedia	encyclopedia	The same difference applies to cognate words derived from the Greek word "παις/Pais"(a child), such as paedophile/pedophile.
foetus	fetus
gauntlet	gauntlet, gantlet	When meaning "ordeal", in the phrase running the gantlet, some American style guides favor gantlet. This spelling is unused in Britain and less usual in America than gauntlet. The word is an alteration of earlier gantlope by folk etymology with gauntlet , always spelled thus.
glycerine	glycerin, glycerine	Scientists use the term glycerol, but both spellings are used sporadically in the US.
grey	gray	Grey became the established British spelling in the 20th century, pace Dr. Johnson and others, and it is but a minor variant in American English, according to dictionaries. Canadians tend to prefer grey. The non-cognate greyhound was never grayhound. Both Grey and Gray are found in proper names everywhere in the English-speaking world. Americans tend to differentiate spelling when comparing the color with the adjective.
jail, gaol	jail	In the U.K., gaol and gaoler are used sometimes, apart from literary usage, chiefly to describe a medieval building and guard.
kerb	curb	For the noun designating the edge of a roadway (or the edge of a British pavement/ American sidewalk/ Australian footpath). Curb is the older spelling, and in the U.K. as well as in the U.S., it is still the proper spelling for the verb meaning restrain. Canada as in the U.S.
liquorice	licorice	Licorice prevails in Canada and it is common in Australia, but it is rarely found in the U.K.; liquorice, which has a folk etymology cognate with liquor, is all but nonexistent in the U.S. ("chiefly British", according to dictionaries).
mediaeval	medieval	and other words using the former æ
mollusc	mollusk, mollusc	The related adjective is normally molluscan in all forms of English.
mould	mold	In all senses of the word. In Canada, both words have wide currency. When speaking of the noun, the US will also use the "mould" spelling.
moult	molt
neurone, neuron	neuron
omelette	omelet, omelette	Omelette prevails in Canada and in Australia. The shorter spelling is the older in English, in spite of the etymology (French omelette).
orientated/disorientated	oriented/disoriented
phoney	phony	Originally an Americanism, this word made its widespread appearance in Britain during the Phoney War. Famously used frequently in Catcher in the Rye.
programme, program	program	"Program" is generally used for computer programming, but the older form is normally used in the U.K. for agendas and theatrical brochures.
pyjamas	pajamas	in the U.K., or in the U.S. and Canada.
plough	plow	Both date back to Middle English. The OED records several dozen variants. In the U.K., plough has been the standard spelling for about three centuries. Although plow was Noah Webster's pick, plough continued to have some currency in the U.S., as the entry in Webster's Third (1961) implies. Newer dictionaries label plough as "chiefly British". The word snowplough/snowplow, originally an Americanism, it predates Webster's reform, and it was first recorded as snow plough. Canada has both plough and plow, although snowplough is much rarer there than snowplow. In the US, "plough" sometimes describes a horsedrawn variety while "plow" refers to a gasoline powered variety. "Plow" has roots in the Latin "plovum".
rack and ruin	wrack and ruin	Several words like "rack" and "wrack" have been conflated, with both spellings thus accepted as variants for senses connected to torture (orig. rack) and ruin (orig. wrack, cf. wreck) In "(w)rack and ruin", the W-less variant is now prevalent in the U.K. but not the U.S.
sceptic (-al, -ism)	skeptic (-al, -ism)	The American spelling, akin to Greek, was preferred by Fowler, and is used by many Canadians, where it is the earlier form. Sceptic also pre-dates the European settlement of the U.S., and it follows the French sceptique and Latin scepticus. In the mid-18th century, Dr. Johnson's dictionary listed skeptic without comment or alternative, but this form has never been popular in the U.K.; sceptic, an equal variant in the old Webster's Third (1961), has now become "chiefly British". Australians generally follow the British usage (with the notable exception of the Australian Skeptics). All of these versions are pronounced with a hard "c", though in French that letter is silent and the word is pronounced like septique.
storey	story	Level of a building. The plurals are storeys vs. stories respectively. The letter "e" is used in British English and in Canada to differentiate between levels of buildings and a story as in a literary work.
sulphur	sulphur, sulfur	Sulfur is the international standard in the sciences (IUPAC), and it is supported by the U.K.'s RSC. Sulphur was preferred by Dr. Johnson, it is still used by British and Irish scientists, and it is still actively taught in British and Irish schools. It prevails in Canada and Australia, and it is also found in some American place names (e.g., Sulphur Springs, Texas and White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia). American English usage guides suggest sulfur for technical usage, and both sulphur and sulfur in common usage and in literature.
tyre	tire	The outer portion of a wheel, which contacts the road or the rail and may be made of metal or rubber. In Canada as in the U.S. Tire is the older spelling, but both were used in the 15th and 16th centuries (for a metal tire). Tire became the settled spelling in the 17th century but tyre was revived in the U.K. in the 19th century somehow for rubber / pneumatic tyres, possibly because it was used in some patent documents, though many continued to use tire for the iron variety. The Times newspaper was still using tire as late as 1905. For the verb meaning "to grow weary" both American and British English use the tire spelling exclusively.
vice	vise	The two-jawed workbench tool. Americans and Canadians retain the very old distinction between vise (the tool) and vice (the sin, and also the Latin prefix meaning a "deputy"), both of which are vice in the U.K. and Australia. Thus, we have Vice-Admiral, Vice-President, and Vice-Principal, but never "Vise-" for any one of these.
yoghurt, yogurt	yogurt, yoghurt	Yoghurt is an also-ran in the U.S., as is yoghourt in the U.K. Although the Oxford Dictionaries have always preferred yogurt, in current British usage yoghurt seems to be prevalent. In Canada, yogurt prevails, despite the Canadian Oxford preferring yogourt, which has the advantage of being bilingual. In Australia as in the U.K. Whatever the spelling is, the word has different pronunciations: in the U.K. or , only in America, Ireland, and Australia. The word comes from the Turkish language word yoğurt. the voiced velar fricative represented by ğ in the modern Turkish alphabet was traditionally written gh in romanizations of the Ottoman Turkish alphabet used before 1928.

Punctuation

For quotation marks, American English generally uses "double quotes" primarily except in newspaper headings, while the British more commonly use 'single quotes' primarily outside of periodicals. British English always puts sentence-final punctuation outside of quotation marks if it is not part of the quoted material; e.g. 'word'. instead of "word." which is a more typically American typesetting convention.

See also

• English in the Commonwealth of Nations
• Australian English
• Canadian English
• New Zealand English
• South African English
• English orthography (spelling)
• The Chicago Manual of Style

References

• Burchfield, R. W. (Editor); Fowler, H. W. (1996). The New Fowler's Modern English Usage. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-869126-2
• Fowler, Henry; Winchester, Simon (introduction) (2003 reprint). A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics Series). Oxford Press. ISBN 0-19-860506-4.
• Hargraves, Orin (2003). Mighty Fine Words and Smashing Expressions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515704-4
• Nicholson, Margaret; (1957). "A Dictionary of American-English Usage Based on Fowler's Modern English Usage". Signet, by arrangement with Oxford University Press.
• Oxford English Dictionary, 20 vols. (1989) Oxford University Press.
• Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961; repr. 2002) Merriam-Webster, Inc.

External links

• Hart's Rules
• The Chicago Manual of Style
• The Guardian style guide
• Word substitution list, by the Ubuntu English (United Kingdom) Translators team

Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary, airplane, draft revision March 2008; airplane is labelled "chiefly North American."
2. British National Corpus. Retrieved 1 April 2008.
3. Merriam-Webster online, aerodrome. Retrieved 1 April 2008.
4. Oxford English Dictionary, airdrome.
5. History & Etymology of Aluminium
6. Peters, p. 32.
7. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. [1]
8. OED, shivaree
9. Oxford English Dictionary, furore.
10. Peters, p. 221.
11. Oxford English Dictionary, Grotty; Grody
12. Peters, p. 242
13. Oxford English Dictionary, mom and mam
14. http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/symphony/things-i-dont-understand-part-3-canada/30-33430/
15. Peters, p. 364.
16. Merriam Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary, naïveté and naivety.
17. Oxford English Dictionary, persnickety
18. Peters, p. 487
19. In Webster's New World College Dictionary, scalawag is lemmatized without alternative, while scallawag and scallywag are defined by cross-reference to it. All of them are marked as "originally American".
20. See, for example, the November 2006 BMA document titled Selection for Specialty Training
21. Peters, p. 510.
22. Oxford English Dictionary, colour, color.
23. Peters, p. 397.
24. Johnson 1755—preface
25. Oxford English Dictionary, honour, honor.
26. From the OED cites, Chaucer used both forms, but the last usages of the "re" form were in the early 1700s. The Oxford English Dictionary: 1989 edition.
27. (except in a 1579 usage) The Oxford English Dictionary: 1989 edition.
28. Although acre was spelled æcer in Old English and aker in Middle English, the acre spelling of Middle French was introduced in the 15th Century. Similarly, loover was respelled in the 17th Century by influence of the unrelated Louvre. (see OED, s.v. acre and louvre)
29. http://www.centurytheaters.com/
30. accoutre
31. accouter
32. Peters, p. 461.
33. Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers of Australian Government Publications, Third Edition, Revised by John Pitson, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1978, page 10, "In general, follow the spellings given in the latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
34. 1989 Oxford English Dictionary:connexion, connection.
35. Oxford English Dictionary, -ize.
36. Hargraves, p. 22.
37. Peters, p. 298
38. Peters, p. 298.
39. "prize". Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. Also, "prize". Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Ed.
40. According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Ed.: prise is a "chiefly Brit var of PRIZE".
41. Peters, p. 441
42. Peters, p. 446.
43. Oxford English Dictionary, analyse, -ze, v. [2]. Retrieved
44. Both the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and American Heritage Dictionary have catalog as the main headword and catalogue as an equal variant.
45. Peters, p. 236.
46. Peters, p. 36.
47. Peters, p. 20.
48. Webster's Third, p. 23a.
49. Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, airplane.
50. Peters, p. 20, p. 389.
51. Peters, p. 338.
52. Peters, p. 258
53. Peters, p. 41.
54. Oxford English Dictionary, for ever.
55. AskOxford: forever. Retrieved 24 June 2008. Cf. Peters, p. 214.
56. For example, The Times, The Guardian, The Economist. Retrieved 24 June 2008.
57. The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
58. Peters, p. 309.
59. Cf. Oxford English Dictionary, traveller, traveler.
60. Peters, p. 581
61. Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, jewellery U.K., American jewelry
62. Peters, p. 283
63. Peters, p. 501.
64. Peters, p. 22.
65. Peters, p. 480. Also National Routeing Guide
66. In American English, swingeing is sometimes spelled swinging see American Heritage Dictionary entry, and the reader has to discern from the context which word and pronunciation is meant.
67. British National Corpus
68. Peters, p. 7
69. Peters, p. 303.
70. Oxford English Dictionary, artefact.
71. Peters, p. 49.
72. Merriam-Webster Online. (Accessed 30 December 2007)
73. Peters, p. 282.
74. http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=inquiry
75. Peters, p. 285
76. Merriam-Webster Online. (Accessed 30 December 2007)
77. Peters, p. 340.
78. Peters, p. 443.
79. Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, 2006, p. 124.
80. The Metric Conversion Act of 1985 gives the Secretary of Commerce of the US the responsibility of interpreting or modifying the SI for use in the US. The Secretary of Commerce delegated this authority to the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ( Turner, 2008). In 2008, the NIST published the US version ( Taylor and Thompson, 2008a) of the English text of the eighth edition of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures publication Le Système International d’ Unités (SI) ( BIPM, 2006). In the NIST publication, the spellings "meter," "liter," and "deka" are used rather than "metre", "litre", and "deca" as in the original BIPM English text ( Taylor and Thompson, 2008a, p. iii). The Director of the NIST officially recognized this publication, together with Taylor and Thompson (2008b), as the "legal interpretation" of the SI for the United States ( Turner, 2008).
81. See for example
82. Peters, p. 104.
83. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved 2009-4-19.
84. Merriam-Webster Online. (Accessed 1 January 2008)
85. Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. (Accessed 1 January 2008)
86. Peters, p. 165.
87. Oxford English Dictionary, draught.
88. Peters, p. 235
89. tiscali.reference. Retrieved on 2007-03-10.
90. Peters, p. 321.
91. Peters, p. 360
92. Peters, p. 392.
93. Oxford English Dictionary, phoney, phony
94. Peters, p. 449.
95. Oxford English Dictionary, plough, plow.
96. Peters, p. 230.
97. Maven's word of the day: rack/wrack
98. Cald Rack
99. Peters, p. 502.
100. Oxford English Dictionary, sceptic, skeptic.
101. Royal Society of Chemistry 1992 policy change
102. "The spelling sulfur predominates in United States technical usage, while both sulfur and sulphur are common in general usage. British usage tends to favor sulphur for all applications. The same pattern is seen in most of the words derived from sulfur." Usage note, Merriam-Webster Online. (Accessed 1 January 2008)
103. The contrasting spellings of the chemical elements Al and S mean that the American spelling aluminum sulfide becomes aluminum sulphide in Canada, and as aluminium sulphide in older British usage.
104. Peters, p. 553.
105. Peters, p. 556.
106. Peters, p. 587. Yogourt is an accepted variant in French of the more normal Standard French yaourt.
107. Merriam-Webster Online – Yogurt entry