On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 at 17:11:53 +0100, MFPA wrote: > When I was at infant school in the early 1970s, older books and > older teachers used the "z". By the time I was in my teens, it was > very unusual to see "-ize" except in an American text (or an old > one, of course). In recent years, I have noticed the "z" spellings > with increasing frequency - probably due to naff spellcheckers on > PCs.
FWIW, from the Oxford Dictionaries "Ask Oxford.com" (http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/ize) "British spelling has always recognized the existence of variant spellings using the suffix -ize/-ise. When American spelling was standardized during the 19th century (mainly through the efforts of the great American lexicographer Noah Webster), the consistent use of -ize was one of the conventions that became established. However, since then, the -ise spellings have become more popular in Britain (and in other English-speaking countries such as Australia), perhaps partly as a reaction against the American custom. Spellings such as organisation would have struck many older British writers as rather French-looking. The Oxford English Dictionary favoured -ize, partly on the linguistic basis that the suffix derives from the Greek suffix -izo, and this was also the style of Encyclopaedia Britannica (even before it was American-owned) and formerly of the Times newspaper. "The main advantage of the modern -ise habit? Lazy spellers do not have to remember that there are several important words which cannot properly be spelt with -ize. These include words which are not formed by the addition of the -ize prefix to a stem, but by some other root which happens to end in the same syllable, such as -vise (as in televise), -cise (as in incise), and -prise (as in comprise). "The American system resulted in the creeping of z into some other words where it did not originally belong. Writers of American English should be aware of some spellings that are regarded as incorrect in the UK, notably analyze." -- Robin Using The Bat! v3.99.24 Windows XP 5.1 Build 2600 Service Pack 2 Popfile v0.22.4 ________________________________________________ Current version is 3.99.24 | 'Using TBUDL' information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
