Differences in Spelling in US, Canada, and UK
Oh NO! Simple words, like color/colour, are spelled differently in the UK, the US, Canada, and other spots in the world. What do we do now?
Here's a chart that should help you out:
| Word in American | Word in Canadian | Word in British |
| Airplane | Airplane | Aeroplane |
| Aluminum | Aluminum | Aluminium |
| Analyze | Analyze | Analyse |
| Behavior | Behaviour | Behaviour |
| Canceled | Cancelled | Cancelled |
| Catalog | Catalogue | Catalogue |
| Center | Centre | Centre |
| Check(money) | Cheque | Cheque |
| Color | Colour | Colour |
| Counselor | Counsellor | Counsellor |
| Draft(of air) | Draft | Draught |
| Favor | Favour | Favour |
| Gray | Grey | Grey |
| Honor | Honour | Honour |
| Installment | Installment | Instalment |
| Judgment | Judgement | Judgement |
| Liter | Litre | Litre |
| Meter | Metre | Metre |
| Mold | Mould | Mould |
| Mom | Mom | Mum |
| Offense | Offence | Offence |
| Plow | Plow | Plough |
| Pajamas | Pyjamas | Pyjamas |
| Sulfur | Sulphur | Sulphur |
| Theater | Theatre | Theatre |
| Tire | Tire | Tyre |
Isn't this freaky?
Try not to forget this sort of stuff when writing those American SATs, or in general when you're writing international documents.
A complete list can be found on Karen Bond's Linguistic Issues webpage, right here.
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This lesson has really freaked me out…don’t know how i’m goin to learn all of them up!!! Do all these spelling ,mistakes really count in the SAT, because I write British English ?
Wow, I had no idea that the British spelled the word tire – tyre. It seems Canada and the UK spell a lot of words the same way, more than the US to Canada or the US to UK.
I’ve noticed that too… I guess it’s because we were a part of the British Empire and the Commonwealth for so long, we spell things the same way. Plus, the Queen can technically mess things up for us if we don’t do what she wants, so it’s better to be nice to her and spell it colour and not color.
What I found most surprising was “cheque”, spelled check in American. Now I get why I see squiggly red lines under cheque… I actually never knew about that one before.
A few points:
tyre/tire: Depends on context. In Australia, ‘tyre’ is the thing that holds up your car, and ‘tire’ is what you do when you’ve been up for a long time. I suspect it’s the same in the UK.
metre/meter: Again, depends on context. In Australia, ‘meter’ is, say, a gas meter, while ‘metre’ is a unit of length. Again, I suspect it’s the same in the UK (although they still tend to use ‘feet’ a lot—how American of them!) and perhaps it’s the same in Canada.
A lot depend on context. One that you’re missing, for example, is kerb/curb. In Australia, a kerb is what’s on the side of the road, and I know this is the case in the UK as well, and that it’s not in Canada—I’ve seen signs talking about the ‘curb lane’ there. However, in all the countries I’ve mentioned, the spelling of the verb is ‘curb’.
I currently live in the United States, and I roll my eyes when Americans talk about ‘British English’, as if only Britain uses spellings like ‘colour’, ‘tyre’, ‘metre’, ‘kerb’, ‘initialise’, ‘dialogue’, etc. etc. etc. (I’m sure there are over a hundred of them.) But most of the English-speaking world spells this way. The U.S. is the big exception, Canada and the Philippines spell a lot of things the U.S. way, but in the rest of the world (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Singapore, etc.), ‘color’ and ‘center’ are considered American spellings. And they are—America is the only country that I know of that spells those words that way. There’s nothing British about ‘colour’ and ‘centre’; it’s just not American. (There’s also nothing ‘English’ about the metric system, but that’s another story.)
I would call those spellings ‘standard English’, and a term I hear a lot is ‘international English’. Americans seem to be offended by those terms, though, so they make up terms like ‘Commonwealth English’, which ignores countries like Belize, which are not part of the commonwealth but still use standard spellings. Besides, it’s not just the U.S. and Canada that have variants; in Australia, for example, ‘boulevarde’ and ‘gaol’ is are acceptable (although uncommon) spellings which I don’t believe exist in the UK, US or Canada.
The link in your article is broken. I’ve been meaning for a while to make a wiki page somewhere that has a table of variants, where one column is the spelling in most countries, and the other is the variant and where it’s used. It would include notes about context (‘metre’/‘meter’, ‘kerb’/‘curb’, etc.) and if the variant is the norm in the respective country or just acceptable (‘curb’ is incorrect spelling for the noun in Australia, while ‘jail’ is the norm and ‘gaol’ is a variant).
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Don’t worry Astha, markers don’t really look for this sort of little things. Writing in British instead of American, or even having a couple of small spelling mistakes won’t affect your mark much.
Keep in mind that markers get a lot of essays to mark in a really short time- they won’t read the entire thing word for word and thoroughly, so they’re likely to miss the little things. It’s better to focus on the big picture when writing- for example, in your essay, it’s more important to have a strong thesis and supporting arguments than no spelling and grammar mistakes.
On that note, it’s a good idea to be aware of the different spelling so that when you encounter these words in the reading and writing sections they don’t confuse you. Also, when writing official international documents, like a visa application, using the right words is fairly important. But don’t try and memorize this entire chart, just read it over and figure out some general patterns and you’ll be ok.