Gray/Grey

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>FWIW, my UK spellchecker on MS-Word does not accept "gray", but the
>US spellchecker accepts both.  I've yet to see a British person spell
>"gray", and I have had it claimed to me (years back) by an American
>that my spelling "grey" was pretentious, but I don't think most
>people notice.

I did some experiments with spell-checkers a while back, in the context of
a parallel discussion on another list, and I found the same sort of thing.
Some spell-checkers will accept something others won't. I can't remember
the complete results, but I remember that some spell-checkers won't accept
'glamour' in American English -- although I think it is probably the
majority spelling in the US (the M-W usage dictionary concurs on this). My
MS Word 97 spell-checker doesn't like 'grey'. Maybe different versions differ.

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'.

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

-- Doug Wilson