Dunno the answer to either of your questions – just wanted to add another standard difference in spelling, which is that Brits double the “l” in “travel” for traveler, traveling, etc.
If you Google on the words “American,” “British,” and “spelling,” you’ll find a bunch of websites with rules about the differences in American and British spelling.
There’s a really silly mistake in that list; it equates US ‘Ton’ to UK ‘Tonne’; both terms are in fact valid in the UK; the former meaning an imperial ton, the latter meaning a metric tonne.
Thanks for the replies! I’ve been writing a story with someone from the UK, and I’ve noticed differences while proofreading. I have wanted to conform to UK usage, as the story has a British Navy setting.
[ul]
[li]I have never come across “carcass” spelt (or spelled) carcas. (I’m English)[/li][li]Do Americans really use the spelling “cigaret”? 58 million Google hits for “cigarette” suggest otherwise[/li][li]I’ve never heard of “commission” spelt with a single “s”[/li][li]“compleat” is archaic. English people almost universally use “complete”[/li][li]We do not spell “ensure” as “insure”. They are different words in both countries.[/li][li]“galoshes” is not “goloshes” in England[/li][li]“heyday” is the same in England, not “heydey”.[/li][li]“gaol” is archaic. “jail” is the norm.[/li][li]“millenium” is not the American spelling. It is wrong everywhere.[/li][/ul]
I’ve lost interest half way through - we need a more reliable source than that web page.
Most of the differences owe to the work of Noah Webster, whose spelling reforms in his original Dictionary of the American Language were adopted virtually universally.
I’ve seen English people write “gaol” – conversion to “jail” may be a regionalism.
Another very common variant series is the final “syllable” that is not sounded, found in British but not American English: catalog(ue) (which does sometimes have the final two letters in American), program(me), analog(ue), omelet(te)
The spelling “realize” is correct in English, and was a key plot point in an Inspector Morse story - he realized that a key suspect would not have spelled the word “realise”, as a man with his educational background would have viewed it as an illiteracy.
A UK-specific Google gives a first page of results for ‘jail’ which are mostly new reports, and a first page for ‘gaol’ which are all of a historical/museum context.
Re. “drily” - at first glance I’d have said that this was simply misspelled, but it’s in the Cambridge dictionary as an equal alternative to “dryly”.
Other errors in that list linked to earlier:
Hyphenations are not uniformly applied on either side of the pond
“BSc”, not “B.Sc.”.
‘Backward’ and ‘beside’ are certainly used, and it’s just the definitions that change
In the nautical sense. It’s a three (or more) -masted sailing vessel, square-rigged except on the aftermost mast, which is fore-and-aft rigged. Nothing to do with dogs or trees. If the list says it’s spelled “bark” in American then who am I to disagree?
It is “bark” in American usage, to the extent that it’s used at all. The story, of course, is the man who made millions developing software and retired young, deciding to indulge his passion for historical sailing ships by manually building one of those vessels. However, his creation was lost at sea on her maiden voyage, because, of course, his barque was far worse than his bytes.
