ABSTRACT
In keeping with common practice, the following discussion speaks of ‘British and American spelling.’ British in this context means primarily the way English is spelled in England, American primarily the way it is spelled in the United States, that is to say a more narrow definition than that between global British and American styles used inChapter 1. Although the distinction between the two may at first seem quite straightforward, British and American spellings do not fall into two classic Aristotelian categories. In neither category do all members share common features that make each equal to all others. It is an evolving distinction, marked with lack of agreement and unexpected complication. This lack of agreement can be seen by comparing the treatment of some ostensible British/American spelling pairs in these four modern dictionaries:
OED: Oxford English Dictionary (Simpson 2013)
W3: Webster’s Third International Unabridged (Gove 2000)
COD: Concise Oxford Dictionary (Stevenson and Waite 2011)
AHD: American Heritage Dictionary (Pratt 2011)
