No, this is not a post on which one of those would win a fight between the two, should they get into one :-)
This post is about a doubt I have, and that keeps confusing more and more each time I ask somebody about it :-)
Is it "kilometer" or "kilometre"?
According to a friend of mine, the first is tipically american and the second one european...
However, Britannica seems to fail to recognize kilometre :-|
Can anyone *please* help me with this?
A kilometre (American spelling: kilometer) at http://www.fact-index.com/k/ki/kilometre.html
Briticanica is a strange beast and not the best source for spelling differences between English and American. The book started out in the UK with accepted English spellings (for the day - they do change), but was sold to an American publisher. For a number of years it was therefore policy to standarise spellings on American rather than English norms, but it was not done in one go, and it was a slow process, so spellings vary depending upon the edition you read. I had a conversation with one of their editors on the topic a number of years ago, so I got this from an insider. Basically everything was to switch from English to American, except some things, but even then there were many things that hadn't switeched.
Since my conversion with an editor, things have changed again, I now believe it's owned by a Swiss company, and so perhaps it should now change language altogether! They stopped producing paperware versions, and moved electronic...
Any quality English dictionary should have all recognised variants of given words, and a clue as to where and when the differing variants are or were spoken.
is 0.621371192 miles. M-I-L-E-S.
