Australian vs British vs American English

If you’re an Australian editor or writer and you’re communicating with an American or British audience, you need to keep the spelling differences in mind.

The main differences between British/Australian/American spellings fall into these categories:

ae/e: British words of Greek origin (‘anaemic’) have kept the ‘ae’, whereas American spelling has replaced the ‘ae’ with an ‘e’ (‘anemic’). Australian spelling fluctuates between the two, and is tending more toward the American version.

ce/se: In Australia and Britain, word pairs such as advice/advise are spelled with ‘ce’ to mark the noun and ‘se’ to mark the verb. But in the USA, just one spelling is used for both the noun and verb forms (eg, ‘practice/practice’ and ‘license/license’).

i/y: Some words that are spelled with a ‘y’ in Britain and Australia (‘tyre’) are spelled with an ‘i’ in the USA (‘tire’).

ise/ize: British and Australian English use either ‘ise’ or ‘ize’ in many verbs, but American English consistently uses ‘ize’.

l/ll: American English always uses a single ‘l’ when adding a suffix that begins with a vowel (‘traveling’), whereas British and Australian English is more erratic, sometimes doubling the ‘l’ (‘travelling’) and sometimes not.

oe/e: For Greek-derived words, British English has kept the ‘oe’ spelling (‘amoeba’), whereas American English has reduced the ‘oe’ to just an ‘e’ (‘ameba’). Australian English has typically followed the British ‘oe’spelling, although recent surveys indicate that Australian writers are ready to replace the ‘oe’ with an ‘e’.

og/ogue: British and Australian spelling ends some words like ‘catalogue’ with ‘ogue’, whereas in the USA, these words leave off the ‘ue’ at the end (‘catalog’).

or/our: British English inserts a ‘u’ after the ‘o’ in words like ‘colour’, whereas American English leaves out the ‘u’ (‘color’). Australian English usage has mostly followed British tradition.

qu/k: In Britain and Australia, words like ‘cheque’ end in ‘que’, whereas in the USA they end with ‘k’ (‘check’).

re/er: Australia usually follows the British treatment of words ending in ‘re’ (‘centre’, ‘theatre’), whereas in the USA these words usually end in ‘er’ (‘center’, ‘theater’).

yze/yse: Australia and Britain end certain words with ‘yse’ (‘analyse’), while the USA ends these same words with ‘yze’ (‘analyze’).

Follow these simple rules, check your spellings in local regional dictionaries, and your words will flow seamlessly between continents.

Works consulted:

Peters, Pam (1995). The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moore, Allison, ed (2004). Macquarie Concise Dictionary (Revised 3rd edition). Sydney: The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/british-and-american-spelling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_spelling#Spelling