When you look up organise in the Oxford English Dictionary it points you to read about organize. To my mind that is an Americanisation and a particularly annoying one at that. This lead me to search a bit deeper to find out who is wrong.
Is it me? Am I needlessly belittling people who spell the word with a Z as simply pandering to the requirements of a continent several thousand miles away who seem to spell everything the way it’s spoken with some frankly bizarre outcomes? Or, am I completely right in my crusade to have words spelled the way in which they were intended.
It’s fairly difficult to get a definitive answer on which version of organise is the right one in UK English so I was further compelled to look up organiser in the very same Oxford English Dictionary. Now according to them the word doesn’t exist, however when I searched for organizer low and behold it was included.
Seems fairly straight forward – right? I’ve been wrong all this time.
Well, er, no. You see Filofax who are well know as one of the biggest manufacturers of the yuppies favourite, the personal organiser, spell it with an s and I’m not about to accuse them of being unable to spell their product name.
Case closed…well at least for now.
BTW: I’m heartened to see that WordPress include UK and American English spellings in their spell checker.
Filed under: Random
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/ize?view=uk
The sooner we stamp out these ‘Americanisms’ the better!
“Americanisms” are great…all hail the Americanism. Its unamerican to unamericanize americanisms.
The only reason the “…sun never sets on the Brittish Empire” is because God doesn’t trust them in the dark. Use “organize”, and support America (note: not a Brittish colony).
I’ve seen it, just shows the Americansm that’s creeping into out beautiful language.
Note: it’s now ‘organiser’ in all mobile phones manufacturers except Motorolla.
“low and behold”? you got to be kidding!
No wonder you’re confused!
I’m guessing you mean ‘you’ve’ or ‘you have’ got to be kidding?
Please don’t make fun of other people’s writing until you’ve learned the basic rules of grammar!
I’m still a little stuck as to what’s wrong with ‘low and behold’; it’s a rather common turn of phrase on this side of the water. Care to enlighten me?
The phrase is “lo and behold”, as in Luke 2: “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them”.
Me, I use organise. It’s a valid choice, but it is just a choice. “English” English often keeps spellings that reflect the French origin of the words. Mr. Webster, over a century ago, decided to make his versions more phonetic. Fine, but don’t get me started on pronunciation….
Lo, not low.
Ah, I stand corrected.