[Vwoolf] ize and ise

Jeremy Hawthorn jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Mon Mar 5 14:27:22 EST 2018


Publishers are increasingly international, and so prefer spellings that 
are common to both the US and the UK (and its old colonies). But some 
words cannot take the ize or yze ending in UK English. I once had a copy 
editor for a UK publisher change analyse and its compounds to analyze 
etc - which is not acceptable in UK English. For a list of the words 
that cannot take a z in UK English, see

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/spelling/ize-ise-or-yse

As Shakespeare had it, thou zed, thou unnecessary letter (or something 
like that). An English friend of mine, by the way, was mystified when 
driving in the US, by all the signs reading EZ on, EZ off. "E zed on - 
what the hell does that mean?"

Jeremy



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