I agree with this. A lot of commercial establishment use spellings like center and theatre because it Los fact, but the standard spellings are still center and theater.
And I agree with others—in the U.S. we usually go to the “(movie) theater” to watch a “movie.” The theater often has “cinema” in its name, but we rarely call it “the cinema” nor refer to the art or industry in general as “cinema.”
Some 45 years ago, in the University Theatre Department, the proper spelling was ‘theatre’ – ‘theater’ referred to those cheap places where they showed movies & cartoons while the audience ate popcorn. Professors would mark you down if you used the ‘theater’ spelling.
But even then that was kinda dying out – only the older professors insisted on it. Younger ones would just point it out, and say that if old so-and-so was teaching this class, your grade would suffer from that, so better get in the habit of using the ‘theatre’ spelling.
American spell-checkers do highlight the ‘theatre’ spelling, but there were no spellcheckers back then. I’d say either spelling is OK today. But then, given cell phones & twitter, just about any spelling seems to be accepted today. U git me, 4 sure?
Sometimes I catch myself saying “tape” instead of record, I was born in 1988, so VCR’s and other cassettes were still around and the most ubiquitous for ‘recording’ things. So I sometimes say ‘tape’. I feel like its going to stick and my kids are going to be saying “what does ‘tape something’ mean? you old man”. It’ll be one of those words that is attributed to older generations in its use. Sort of like “fix you supper” or “that’s horsehockey”.
When I here :recording’ I reach for my video camera…