My computer gives me a red squiggly when I write the word “catalogue.” I guess the current vogue is for “catalog,” though the “-ue” were definitely included when I was a kid.
I was also taught to write “catsup” instead of “ketchup” and “doughnut” instead of “donut.” I’m in my early 30’s. What spellings have changed in your lifetime?
I don’t know…I was taught “catsup” and “catalogue” at a small elementary school in Virginia with no apparent Anglophile connections. Do they still spell those words that way in the UK?
When I was young (1970s) “alright” did not appear in the Oxford dictionary (I still have a '70s era dictionary and it definitely isn’t there) and would have been marked wrong by my teachers. This is despite the fact that it was fairly widespread - The Who’s “The Kids are Alright” for example.
Now it seems to have been accepted. My daughters are at an elite private school and they have had “alright” as a spelling word.
I still can’t bring myself to use it, but I blame all those kids who won’t get off my lawn.
Doughnut/donut was the one I thought of when I saw the thread title.
When I was a kid, around 40 years ago, my family used the word “catsup” (pronounced the way it’s spelled), but I heard plenty of other people refer to “ketchup,” and I saw both variations used on labels. I’m not sure how much that’s changed nowadays, because I hardly ever use the stuff.
I seem to recall once learning that “disk” was the proper spelling for a computer disk (as in “floppy disk” or “disk drive”) while “disc” was preferred for audio discs (“compact disc”). That was before the distinction between the two was so blurred.