British english and american english:

SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION

Spelling and punctuation differences are, much like the majority of differences in pronunciation, not merely haphazard and unsystematic. Instead, certain principles are involved, including simplification, regularization, derivational uniformity and reflection of pronunciation. Of course, there are also a number of individual, unsystematic differences.

Simplification

This principle is common to both the British and the American traditions but sometimes it is realized differently in each. AmE has a greater reputation for simplification as often attested (удостоверять) by such standard examples as

Am.E Br.E

program - mme

(Br. E “program” for computer software)

The same with measurement words ending in

Am.E Br.E

-gram - gramme

e. g. Am.E Br.E

kilogram - mme

counselor counsellor

Simplification of ae and oe to e in words taken from Latin and Greek (heresy, federal) is the rule for all of English, but this rule is carried out less completely in BrE, where we find mediaeval next to medieval, foetus /fi:tes/ next to fetus and paediatrician next to pediatrician. This is especially noticeable in view of the existence of AmE forms with simple e compared with the non-simplified forms of BrE, for example,

AmE esthetics BrE aesthetics (also AmE)

maneuver manoeuvre

anemia anaemia

anapest anapaest

egis aegis

ameba amoeba

But many words have only ae and oe in AmE:

e.g. aerial

Oedipus

A further simplification in AmE is one which has not been adopted at all in BrE: the dropping ue of -logue in words such as dialog

monolog

catalog

This simplification, which does not extend to words such as Prague, vague, vogue is not accepted for use in formal AmE writing. Note the simplification of words such as BrE judgement to AmE judgment (though both spellings occur in both varieties).

BrE employs some simplified spellings which have not been adopted in AmE:

BrE skilful AmE skillful

wilful willful