robin1234

Not sure when there was last a thread on this.

Here is one I only became aware of yesterday, fulfill (American,) fulfil (British.) I was reading something, saw it spelled (or spelt) “fulfill,” and thought it didn’t look right so I looked it up, apparently both are correct, “fulfill” is most common in the US. I have a feeling it’s a general category, words that can be spelled with either a double or a single consonant, like this?

A more obvious one, gantlet (American,) gauntlet (British,) as in running the gauntlet. Apparently this word is unrelated to gauntlet (as in glove) which is spelled “gauntlet” in both British and American. In the “running the gauntlet” usage, apparently the spelling was usually gantlet until the 18th century, when gauntlet became more common. So this is one of those cases where American English persists in an archaic usage.

Lion in Winter

Ugh. I've been in the US so long that I've got to the point where I can't remember which is US spelling and which is UK. I'm currently working with people in the UK so I'm sure they think I just can't spell. Then if I try setting my spell check to UK format it upsets all the US stuff, including the date formatting.

robin1234

I randomly use British or US spellings. Except to my sister. I always use American spellings, just to annoy her. I’ve been winding her up for 60 years, so pretty good at it.

spouse of scouse

I'm never sure if the British found a 'u' or the US lost one. Australians use British English so I'm keeping it anyway.

favour/favor
humour/humor
neighbour/neighbor

Lion in Winter

That's the only one that I can keep track of. British English puts the u in. the US lost it. The one I can't remember at all is whether z or s is used.

retzie

Double-l is the worst! Especially because sometimes US spelling has fewer l's, and other times it has an extra one: enrollment (US)/enrolment (UK) vs modeling (US)/modelling (UK). For some variety, there's also focused (US)/focussed (UK).

Jewelry/jewellery just makes me sad.

Lion in Winter

The thing that makes me saddest out of all that is when it's pronounced "jewlery". Drives me mad, in either country.

SultanOfSwing

I always remember in an appendix of one of those cool big dictionaries you used to get where it said that while both are interchangeable, '-ize' is considered 'correct' by I think Oxford.

Don't quote me though and i can't be arsed looking it up

BuckinghamshireBoy

I find that most of the grown-up dictionariez plump fo...

Oh crap, I just realised you said not to quote you.

Nutmegger

I agree with you on L. When I am editing something from English to American, I so often miss the double L in traveled or traveling.

scrubbedexpat091

I get mixed up with US vs Canada, some words Canadians use the US spelling, other words the UK spelling. I just can't always keep track.

retzie

At some point, someone in a grant office at Oxford University gave me a stern talking-to about "-ize" and "-ise" both having a proper place in British English. Apparently, the former is for when the root of the word is Greek, the latter Latin. By this rule, there is only ever one correct option (which can readily be identified using one's encylopaedic knowledge of etymology... Obviously.)

Having a look now, it looks like this is an editorial policy of Oxford University Press. Of course, Cambridge University Press prefer "-ise"

Ohhh, while we're at it, if we want to jump down the punctuation rabbit hole: American use of double-quotes instead of single ones ("-ize" vs '-ize'), and putting a comma after "e.g.," and "i.e.,".

Rete

In the US the word enroll is spelt or spelled with 2 LL's normally so, of course, it would be spelled with 2 LL's with the 'ment' attachment. Model is only spelled with 1 L and therefore, there is only one L used when attaching "ing".

Why would there be an additional 's' in the focussed? As for gauntlet, I'm an American and never heard of the word 'gantlet' and use gauntlet for both meaning.

SultanOfSwing

Best part is I read that in a Collins dictionary

It was also from 1977 but that's neither here nor there. Now you bring it up though I think I remember the Greek vs Latin thing too. At any rate my phone will autocorrect them all to '-ize'.

I also didn't know the difference in usage inverted commas was a thing. I just always always that double inverted commas was for speech, and single for everything else. I guess I fluked that one ...

I also used to be way more pedantic about this kind of thing but I sort of stopped caring after a while. I think of it as code switching now instead when I switch between American and British grammatical conventions.

robin1234

“Gantlet” is frequently, but not universally, used in American English. Just for instance, the Atlantic Magazine uses “gantlet” but the New Yorker uses “gauntlet.” This article in Grammarist explains the etymology.

https://grammarist.com/usage/gantlet-gauntlet/