Wednesday, April 09, 2008

This one is for Patrick

This is from Wiki:

Theater is the prevailing American spelling and is used by America's national theater as well as major American newspapers such as the New York Times (theater section) to refer to both the dramatic arts as well as to buildings where performances take place; yet theatre is also current, witness Broadway and The New Yorker. Some places in the United States have "Centre" in their names (i.e. Rockville Centre, New York), named both before and after spelling reform, and there are very occasional uses of "Center" in England [3]). For British accoutre(ment), US practice varies: Merriam-Webster favours the -re spelling,[31] American Heritage the -er spelling.[32]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

is the -er and the -re spelling at the end of words ok? does it matter whichever one you use?

Wilson said...

For our class, it's best to stick with whatever is the most common American spelling. Therefore, you should write "theater" instead of "theatre" just as you would write "color" instead of "colour."