383557 - grey is treated as a spelling error in en-US

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Spelling checker, defect)

Description

[timeless]

I believe, although I could be wrong that grey is an alternative spelling for gray in American English. (Unlike colour which is a British only word.)

Miriam Webster has an entry for it:
http://m-w.com/dictionary/grey
Main Entry: grey
variant of GRAY

This is different than the -our items where it says:
http://m-w.com/dictionary/flavour
Main Entry: fla·vour
chiefly British variant of FLAVOR

Wikipedia lists it in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#Miscellaneous_spelling_differences

I'm filing this as unconfirmed because I don't want to absolutely assert my opinion here.

FWIW, the difference between gray and grey is something like 13% in Google whereas flavor is flavour is more like 150%.

Comment 1

[Vlad Sukhoy]

I don't see a reason why this is unconfirmed. Any spelling experts around? If m-w says it is ok, then probably it is ok.

Comment 2

[Németh László]

"Americans spell it gray except when they imitate the British grey, which is a Standard variant." (Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–).  The Columbia Guide to Standard American English.  1993., http://www.bartleby.com/68/27/2827.html, see also http://www.bartleby.com/68/45/5645.html)

That means for me, grey is a spelling error in average American English documents. (By the way, in OpenOffice.org, using en_UK spell checking dictionary (even inline with character formatting of OOo) is the best method to imitate British spell checking.) The best solution for this problem (difference of average and professional usage) is offering multiple dictionaries (or grammar checking).

Comment 3

[Vlad Sukhoy]

1923 was long ago. I agree that in some context it may be an error, however in most casual e-writing (IM/email) this is hardly an error.

Comment 4

[Vlad Sukhoy]

1923 was the time the guy was born :). Something is wrong with me these days...

Comment 5

[timeless]

i filed it as unconfirmed because i expected people to have opinions and didn't want to claim mine was right.

Comment 6

[Vlad Sukhoy]

Sure. I think we need more people to express their opinion here and then make a decision.. As in above, my opinion is that highlighting "grey" as erroneous spelling is not appropriate in vast majority of contexts, and should be avoided.
The issue of professional versus average usage is separate and should be treated as separate.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

isn't this a decision for dictionary maintainers?
 http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries

Comment 8

[Matt Caywood]

"gray" is the dominant spelling in US English. Wikipedia claims that some regions still use "grey," but citation needed.

The issue seems complex. The usual linguistics sites aren't much help:

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003490.php

Webster's is prescriptive
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gray
Grey a. See Gray (the correct orthography).

but the other dictionaries are not. 

I think there's enough variation that Firefox should not be prescribing usage with the red underline.

For certain phrases ("grey goo", originally written by an American) "grey" seems to be preferred usage, and that phrase is common enough on the web that "grey" should be included for this reason alone.

In addition, "greybeard" is already in the dictionary, along with "greyhound", and "greyness".  

I'm going to add "grey" as part of Bug 479334, and all derivatives.