I’m an American newly hired on at a British company. I’ve been asked to write my documentation in British English. I’ve long been a regular reader of British books and magazines. Easy enough, or so I thought.
Yesterday, a (very smart) British colleague challenged me on my use of ‘principal’ vs ‘principal’.
Usage 1: “There are three principle reasons for this approach.”
Usage 2: “There are three principal reasons for this approach.”
In his opinion, these are just different regional spellings, with Usage 1 being the correct UK spelling. In my opinion, usage 1 is incorrect in both regions. Usage 2 is better, though not really correct, not because of the spelling, but because it suggests there can be three most important things", which would seem illogical in any language.
British grammarians, what say you? (I may as well invite the Americans; you’re going to show up anyway
He is completely wrong. They are two different words and principle would not be the correct choice in any context.
There is nothing wrong with having multiple principal reasons for doing something. Surely it is the norm. It’s not like primary reason or the much misused priority which originally meant first concern. There was no ranking of priority.
English teacher here, in both senses of the word “English.” The usage of those two words does not differ regionally and example two is the correct one.
I’m happy to acquiesce to OED, but note that I was wrong most of my life, and finally learned this only a couple of years ago.
Way back in the 1950’s a schoolteacher drilled ino us that “principal” applied only to the principal of a school and “principle” was correct in other contexts. :smack:
Long-term user of British English chiming in: the second usage is correct, the first is wrong. Your colleague, however smart, is misguided. Perhaps he was thinking of this usage: “In principle, there are three principal reasons…”?
Encoded in the saying “The principal is your pal”.
In general, “principal” is an adjective, while “principle” is a noun. Unfortunately the most common exposure to “principal” that schoolchildren encounter, the person at the top of the school hierarchy, is an exceptional use of “principal” as if it was a noun (being a shortened form of “Principal Teacher”).
Here we may have a US/UK difference. In the UK the head of a school is almost always referred to as the ‘Head’. Of course they used to be headmaster or mistress but that is somewhat old fashioned now.
In Canada, it was “principal”, but “headmaster” was known as a term seen in literature as the head of a school to indicate that said school was especially fru-fru and pretentious.
Per the OED, principal can be a noun or an adjective - and an adverb when formed as principally -whereas principle can be a noun or a verb. The definitions in the OED are too lengthy to reproduce here.
