US/UK spell-checkers (was: gray/grey)

[Lynne Murphy]

Douglas W wrote:

>My take is that the spell-checkers are prepared by post-literate geeks --
>the same ones who have convinced the Internet world that the singular of
>'species' is 'specie'.

I think most spell-checkers are based on actual dictionaries,
although they differ in whether they allow the non-preferred (second)
spellings or not.  There's a good reason for that, I think.  For
example, US dictionaries usually give both 'l' and 'll' versions of
words like label(l)ed, fuel(l)ed, etc.  (NB: British Scrabble players
always challenge the single 'l' ones when I play them--a lot of them
seem not to realize that the variation exists--another case of the US
having more acceptable variations than the UK.)  But spellcheckers
(or good ones, I think) prefer one or the other.  This way, you won't
have a sentence like "The fuelled cars were labeled", which uses two
different spelling rules and thus is a copy-editor's enemy.  (For
this reason, I think my Eudora US spell-checker stinks because it
allows 'labelled' but not 'fuelled'.)  In earlier versions of my
MS-Word spell-checker had both 'l' and 'll' versions, so I
systematically removed all of the 'll' ones.

In my experience, and comparing the New Oxford Dict of Eng and the
AHD4 here, the British are more particular about claiming some
spellings as unkosher (i.e., US only), but Americans acknowledge
both--thus most Americans don't realize that the 'l'/'ll' variance
has its heart in a US/UK varietal difference.  (For most publishers,
the 'l' versions are 'standard US', but your spell-checker might
accept both.)

ae/e:  AHD only acknowledges 'haemo-' in the combining form entry and
not in any of the words using that form.  NODE acknowledges the
'hemo-' forms in all the 'haemo-' entries, but marks them US.

l/ll:  Both dicts acknowledge both (each preferring a different
order), but again NODE marks the 'l' spellings as US.

mollusk/mollusc:  Again AHD has both (mollusk first), but NODE says
'mollusk' is US only.

tire/tyre:  AHD has 'tyre' as 'Chiefly British', NODE has 'tire' (in
wheel sense) as 'US spelling'.

God, think of all the time I'd have for doing work if I didn't take
the ADS discussions so seriously!

>
>Would you have noticed if you had occasionally seen 'gray' in a book by a
>Britisher? I wouldn't have.

Perhaps some would pass me by, but since I freelance as a copy editor
who "translates" British-based varieties to American English, I'm
probably more sensitive to such things than the average American (or
linguist!).  One of my pet peeves in UK and South African English
spelling these days is that there is a movement toward the American
-ize spellings (over -ise), but people tend to be inconsistent about
them.  So I'm always harassing students (in theses, where
presentation is important) who have 'analyse' on page 47 and
'analyze' on page 49.  Or who have 'realize' but 'recognise'.

Please don't quote to me about foolish consistencies!  I've heard it
all before!

Lynne the Obsessive
--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320