stor[e]y

[Charles Doyle]

I didn't know that! I simply learned "storey" as THE spelling of the architectural term and never noticed that an alternative spelling exists; so I didn't even think to look up the word in a dictionary. We are all victims of our upbringing.

Live and learn . . . .

--Charlie


---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:04:48 -0700
>From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> (on behalf of Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>)>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>On Mar 14, 2010, at 5:01 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:
>
>> Reading a novel by one of my favorite crime novelists--Michael
>> Connelly, _Nine Dragons_ (NY: Little, Brown, 2009)--I find a
>> description of a Hong Kong apartment building that "rose seventy-
>> three stories from the midslope of the mountain" (192).
>>
>> But I learned as a child that the library is the tallest building in
>> town; it has the most stories . . . .
>
>both NOAD2 and AHD4 have "storey" as a chiefly British variant of
>"story" 'floor of a building', and the OED has the sense under
>"story", with British cites for that spelling (as well as for the
>"storey" spelling).  that is: "story" is the general U.S. spelling,
>and a reasonably common British spelling as well.  (GMAU -- Garner's
>Modern American English -- maintains flatly that "story" is AmE and
>"storey" is BrE, period, as if there were no allowable variation in
>the matter on either side of the Atlantic.)
>
>no doubt that there are some people who are fanatic about a sense
>differentiation by spelling, so that they label "story" in the
>building sense as simply "incorrect".  but sources like Brians and
>MWDEU lend no support  to this idea; neither discusses the variant
>spellings at all.
>
>arnold
>
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org