Tardis:Spelling cheat card

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Revision as of 15:13, 21 September 2011 by CzechOut (talk | contribs)

At this wiki, we've taken a community stand to use British English in our main article space, and we therefore have a strict policy to support that consensus. However, a lot of our editors are American, which means that they won't think they're making mistakes at all. The help file, Help:How can I get my computer to spell check in British English?, gives tips on how you can make it easier to spot the mistakes you probably don't even know you're making.

However, there are some words that are so commonly misspelt they deserve to be highlighted in the following spelling cheat card. These, then, are the words our spelling bot has actively found, time and time again.

Correct Incorrect
materialise
dematerialise, rematerialise, materialisation
materialize
realise
realisation, realising, realised
realize
appaled
appaling
appalled
colonise colonized
ageing
de-ageing
aging
synthesise
synthesising
synthesize
centre
centring, centred, self-centred
center
labelled
labelling but the base label has only one l
labeled
randomise
therefore, randomiser
randomize
criticise
criticising, criticised
criticized
colonise
colonised, colonising
colonize
humorous
This one is "overcompensation" — humour, humoured, humouring are all correct, but the US and UK agree on how to spell humorous
humourous
organise
organisation, organising, organised
organized
hypnotise
hypnotised, hypnotising
hypnotized
cancelled
cancelling, cancellation
canceled, canceling, cancelation (though, actually, cancellation is correct on both sides of the Atlantic)
chanelled
chanelling
chaneled
instalment
This is a tricky one. Intstalment derives from the UK-only way of spelling install, instal. The British tend to use install as the base for most other forms of the word, just like Americans do. So installing, installed etc. are seen as correct by at least some Britons. But instalment is, for whatever reasons, firmly seen as the absolutely correct British spelling.
installment