I'm attempting to get back in the swing of blogging about stuff.  In an effort to practice (or "practise" as the British spell it), I thought I'd show you a few words that the British spell differently than Americans.  As you might imagine, this becomes a problem particularly in situations like work emails, where one writes a lot of things to people who are not American (and usually British).  This sorta belongs on the "Language Barriers" page, but I'm putting it here in the name of posting SOMEthing today...

apologise
as in "I apologise profusely for the spelling error on our meeting agenda."

co-ordinator
this is just plain annoying.  an unnecessarily hyphenated word.  i've held a few jobs in the past where my official title included the word "Coordinator," but when a British HR department reads my resume they think I've misspelled part of my own job title.  as if.

colour
i rather like this one.  no complaints ;-)

disorientated
sounds more like a George W. Bush-ism than an actual word.

favour
meh.

manoeuvre
talk about over-complicating something...

organisation
this is one i've had to write or type quite a few times, and each time i do, i roll my eyes.  what do the Brits have against the letter Z anyway?

programme
again, over-complication.

tonne
not that i often ever refer to a ton of anything - but again, it's just extra letters that bring nothing to the party.  then again, i also dislike the metric system in general, so whatever.


There you have it:  a little warm-up, which was certainly not exciting, but perhaps interesting.


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