US vs UK English

Blog Post number 32 Written: 06-23-2021 Uploaded 09-09-2022

            I never knew there was a difference between American and British English, at least not until I was in high school as a little kid I just assumed English was English, because words are words ya know? Since the previous post was about Grammarly, this one will be about one of the things it has taught me. My English isn’t American. I use the English spelling of English words (heh, Ironic.) for lots of words, and Grammarly flags them, as misspelled because they’re non-American. And I have to ignore those flags because I am stubborn like that. I’ve never been good at spelling, and that’s the way I have been spelling those words since forever, I’m not going to change them because some dumb computer told me to. (although, I’ve been writing with Grammarly long enough and in a large enough volume that I think it’s started learning because now it has started flagging other words as non-English spelling. And that gives me some small sick pleasure too.) Despite not being chill about the oxford comma situation, the publisher is chill enough that so long as I am consistent with American spelling or British spelling they don’t care which I use. So… because I have always done it that way, I am keeping my odd smattering of words with British spelling. So Grammarly can suck it.

            So I’ll list a few examples, some of the most common culprits in my writing.

Leapt- Is the British English spelling I used, apparently, the American spelling is “Leaped”

Backwards- Is the British English spelling that I use, and the proper American spelling is backward without the S.

Realise – is the British English spelling I used, but I guess it is supposed to be spelled Realize because I am American? I mean what difference does that make, words are words…

            Those are just the most common examples I can remember off the top of my head. There are more, probably another half dozen words that regularly get flagged for English spelling rather than American spelling. The difference, to me at least, seems negligible and I’m not sure why Grammarly, especially the free version that lacks so many of the more advanced features. But that’s a thing you know now, do what you will with that information. It has actually brought me some amusement.

P.S. I find it Ironic that this is the post that came out of the rolodex given recent world events.