[Ads-l] "Grey" in AmE

[Laurence Horn]

> On Mar 4, 2016, at 1:56 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Part of a thread on a copyeditors' list I belong to:
> 
> Original post:
> On Mar 4, 2016 12:10 PM
> Subject: "Grey" not dead yet

Influence from Christian Grey (as in "50 Shades of") and/or Meredith Grey (as in "____'s Anatomy"?  The TV medi-drama's title of course plays off the standard reference tome _Gray's Anatomy_, but Meredith and her fellow Greys (half-sister and mother) on the ABC show are far more widely known now than Henry Gray (1827-1861).

LH
>> 
>> From the wild:
>> 
>> "Grey is the new beige."
>> 
>> ---Crate & Barrel
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.crateandbarrel.com_special-2Dfeatures_how-2Dwe-2Dcreate-2Dnatural-2Dmix_1&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=wQZ8mQncacwVwi9VcvSwMaUoXCmCxEh9GJ7sPRyCfZ4&s=G0wxF8KQHynCN9PjjuEK0E0WiJMLF5SPDkTG-OtodFk&e= 
> 
>> Maybe they like the visual effect of the e's in "grey," "beige," and
> "neutral."
> 
> My reply:
> So do I. Native AmE speaker, but I've used that particular British spelling
> for many years, for just that reason.
> 
> Others:
> 
>> I'd estimate that about a third of my American clients (mostly fiction
> writers), even when we specify AmE and use CMOS [Chicago Manual of Style]
> and M-W [Merriam-Webster], the whole nine yards, prefer grey over gray.
> It's fascinating to me, a UK-born Anglo-Canadian who has always used grey
> but has no problem switching to gray.
> 
>>> Grey is alive and well, even in AmE. I just sent a book to the printer
> for which that spelling was specified on the style sheet. US author. US
> copyeditor (not me, in this case). People are entitled to their preference,
> non?
> 
> Mark Mandel
> 
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