Were we paranoid, we’d suspect someone had designed the English language to be infuriating. After all, we have silent letters, unreliable spelling rules and homophones to contend with. Throw variant spellings into the mix, and you can see why things get tricky!
Let’s get specific. Variant spellings occur when a word has more than one spelling. ‘Doughnut’, for example, is now often spelled ‘donut’ instead. Both terms are accepted in modern English.
Some variant spellings come from regional differences (e.g. ‘grey’ in British English vs. ‘gray’ in American English). Others arise from informal language (e.g. when ‘nite’ is used instead of ‘night’). In some cases, though, it’s just a matter of preference.
We won’t attempt to list all the words with variant spellings here (that’d take a while). But there are some common letter combinations and situations in which variants occur. These include:
All of the examples above are terms where either spelling is accepted in British English. There are plenty of others, however, where there is a strict regional difference. ‘Color’, for instance, is the standard spelling of ‘colour’ in the USA. But while these are variant spellings of the same word, they are not interchangeable: using ‘color’ in British English would be incorrect.
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One problem with variant spellings is that spellcheckers often miss them. This may not matter if you’re only using a word once, but it can lead to having inconsistent or accidentally obscure spellings in your work. As such, it’s important to keep an eye out for these terms.
If you want to make sure you’re using the most common spelling for your region, you can also check Google’s n-gram viewer, which lets you see how often each term has been used.
However, the main thing here is consistency. If a word has two spellings, you should try to use one form consistently within a document (using the ‘Find’ function in Microsoft Word can help you check this).
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