# Spelling confusion



## Overread (Sep 10, 2007)

Ok I'm from the UK and i'm confused. Recently I read Path of Fate and Path of Honor by Diana Pharaoh Francis (not brilliant but I like the theme). Anyway Ia always assumed that some one made a blunder with the spelling of honour on the title of the second book. Now though I find another example of honor; Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold. So is honor an actual word now? I ask because even my word processor says that it does not exist and that was programed in america.


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## lyrra sark (Sep 10, 2007)

your word processor may have been programmed in america, but you probably have a version meant for sale in the UK, or the program knows - possibly because you indicated it during setup - that you are using UK english.

'honor' is the conventional spelling in the States.


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## Delvo (Sep 10, 2007)

It's just like the missing "u" in "colour" and "favour" over here. I seldom see those or "honor" spelled with the "u" at all, and when I do it's a sure sign that the document is of foreign origin because nobody in this country ever uses the "u".

If your software says that spelling's not right, then it's not set for American spellings.


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## PTeppic (Sep 10, 2007)

If you're near a library (or bookstore), I found the section on American spelling in Melvyn Bragg's "The Adventure of English" to be very informative. Actually I found the whole thing to be good reading, though the rest is less relevant to this thread...


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## Overread (Sep 10, 2007)

Well - favor and honor - two more to add to my list = though I would have thought that a publisher would change the spelling for a different country as it stands honor still looks wrong to me - but then considering that my own spelling is only any good when Word is around I should not complain.


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## Who's Wee Dug (Sep 10, 2007)

Another two for your list, nite and florescent, at least I think that is the spelling in the States.


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## The Ace (Sep 10, 2007)

Don't worry about it.  US spellings are all over the place.


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## manephelien (Sep 11, 2007)

Yes, honor is an US spelling, and you've heard the explanations why. Many books do have both British and American editions, the most notorious of which is probably Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone [sic!]. There are lots of words which either look the same and mean different things ('jumper' in the UK is sweater in the US, the American meaning of 'jumper' is a sleeveless dress meant to be worn over a shirt or blouse: for Brits some primary school uniforms require a dress like that) or are simply spelled differently.

Florescent is a word, but it means "flowering". However, it has started to take on the meaning of fluorescent. This u version is perfectly valid in the US too, because it comes from the element fluorine.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Sep 11, 2007)

Who's Wee Dug said:


> Another two for your list, nite and florescent, at least I think that is the spelling in the States.



No, "nite" is not a correct spelling in the US -- well, not unless it's part of a proper name.  It's used when people are either being lazy or (which in my opinion is worse) in a heavy-handed attempt at being cute.


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## dwndrgn (Sep 11, 2007)

I always have trouble with jewelry and jewellery and I tend to mix them up and spell it jewelery.  Too much time spent on UK jewellery sites I'm thinking!


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## Interference (Sep 11, 2007)

Aluminum was a typo.  Somebody left the second 'i' out by mistake and the (adorable) yanks have been pronouncing it that way ever since.  Is this the first example of a spelling _mistake_ entering the language (apart from names - I still get a kick out of the way Americans pronounce Mahoney and Kehoe)?


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## j d worthington (Sep 11, 2007)

"Nite" is one of those holdovers from one of the "simplified spelling" movements of the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries, connected to journalism (where it still crops up, occasionally but rarely... though it used to be quite common in some newspapers); along with use of "z" for "surprise", "compromise", etc., which one sees periodically, especially in writing before about 1940 (most of the strong adherents of the movement began to finally let it go about then, though not entirely). Several of the pulp magazines used this for a while, along with some of the others. It was a sort of half-baked attempt to go with a more phonetic spelling, setting etymology of the words aside....


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## PTeppic (Sep 11, 2007)

Interference said:


> Aluminum was a typo.  Somebody left the second 'i' out by mistake and the (adorable) yanks have been pronouncing it that way ever since.  Is this the first example of a spelling _mistake_ entering the language (apart from names - I still get a kick out of the way Americans pronounce Mahoney and Kehoe)?



Not strictly true. Wiki (for example) clarifies Sir Humphrey Davy's original choice of name, which was later modified to be more consistent with other elements.


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## Rosemary (Sep 11, 2007)

I made up a custom dictionary in my computer to cover those words which are not of English UK  spelling.  Makes typing up articles much easier.


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## Ursa major (Sep 12, 2007)

And let's not forget those words and phrases that are spelt the same but mean something different, if not the opposite, e.g. "momentarily" and "to table" an issue. (I saw an example of this last one in _Stranger in a Strange Land_. Luckily for me, my friends who work in international standards had warned me about this.)


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## Interference (Sep 12, 2007)

And _presently_, Big Bear, which is one of my personal big bug-bears.

Yeah, Wiki corrects me, though after the -ium spelling was established (as it goes on to say) an advertising (presumed) typo caused it to revert to -um, which is still a silly story, you must admit, PTeppic.


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