Anything About English

This is my third post in Anything About English.

My first post was pointing out one of the exceptions in English language.

The second post. Well..
Few minutes after publishing the second post, I was listening to one of the Grammar Girl’s podcast, episode 204, Is “Got” proper English?

I said:

When it comes to the length of word, the British is the winner.

Mignon Fogarty, in her podcast, said:

If you speak American English, you will use “gotten” …. Users of British English, on the other hand, will say “got”

Hm..
With language, you’ll never know.
:D

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a color or a colour?
favorite or favourite?
honored or honoured?
traveled or travelled?
airplane or aeroplane?

and many more!

It’s the classic UK vs US English spelling.

I used to use whatever come to my head first. It didn’t matter to me as long as it was a real word.
That was before I found something.

When it comes to the length of word, the British is the winner.

Every first word of my example above is the shorter one of two. They all are US spelling style.

I know I cannot depend on this rule alone to detect which word is in which spelling style.

Gray, for example. It’s gray vs grey. Both have 4 letters.

Hm.

From this blog post, I found something that could help me remember:

Gray is a color.

Grey is a *colour*.

Or

grAy is how it’s spelled in America
grEy is how it’s spelled in England

The second one is from grey or gray site.
Besides the explanation, the site also provides 100 most commonly misspelled words.

Now, now..
How can I remember center vs centre?

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The 27 year old man owns a gorgeous four wheel drive.

Owns.
There’s an s already!

Yeah, but..

27 year old man? A gorgeous four wheel drive?
Aren’t they supposed to be 27 years old man and a gorgeous four wheels drive?
Well, no.

Noun phrase that acts as an adjective will lose its plural form.

Not all plural get their s.

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