Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This is a list of British English words that have different American English spellings, for example, colour (British English) and color (American English). Word pairs are listed with the British English version first, in italics, followed by the American English version: spelt, spelled; Derived words often, but not always, follow their root.
Today's British English spellings mostly follow Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), while many American English spellings follow Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language ("ADEL", "Webster's Dictionary", 1828). [2] Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic.
The following is a handy reference for editors, listing various common spelling differences between national varieties of English. Please note: If you are not familiar with a spelling, please do some research before changing it – it may be your misunderstanding rather than a mistake, especially in the case of American and British English spelling differences.
Usage examples (approx.) Main dialect Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary: Cambridge University Press: 2003 [c] 4th (ISBN 9781107619500) 2013 (24.06) 1,856 140,000 British: Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary: Collins Cobuild: 1987 10th (ISBN 978-0008444907) 2023 (13.04) 1,920 British: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English: Pearson ...
This list does not include place names in the United Kingdom or the United States, or places following spelling conventions of non-English languages.For UK place names, see List of irregularly spelled places in the United Kingdom.
See American and British English spelling differences for details.) Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other irregularities in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains, depending on dialect, 24–27 consonant phonemes and 13–20 vowels.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
The English language was introduced to the Americas by the arrival of the English, beginning in the late 16th century.The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and settlement and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, included 470–570 million people, about a quarter of the world's population.