9 yrs olds spelling test - do you agree 'emphasize' is WRONG!!!???

[tyketiler]

2 incorrect spellings today in school test 'emphasize' and 'reorganize' marked WRONG. What do you all think? OED agrees with my son!

Thanks for all your answers, think I will ask teacher about spelling policy. not looking forward to doing it tho as she is old school and pretty unapproachable (belittles the children in front of the class if they get things wrong etc). Might just wimp out and send him in with copies of relevant OED pages!!

Both are totally acceptable in the UK and an -ize spelling should not be marked as wrong in a UK school.

However, in many companies, one of either the -ise or -ize spellings is deemed "house style" in order to ensure consistency.

Children learning spellings need to know this.

I would spell both with an s .

Bink is right -- the voice of reason! I lean towards s, myself, but z is definitely not wrong in the UK, and the child is perfectly within his rights to take it up with the teacher (staggering in with the appropriate volume of the shorter OED if necessary).

The point about consistency is well-made, though -- worth emphasis/zing to your ds that he should opt for one or other spelling and not mix them randomly.

This takes me back to 'gateau-gate' (which Bink may remember) in which my dd1 offered up 'gateaux' as the pluralis/zation of 'gateau', only to have it marked wrong, and be told by the teacher that it should be 'gateaus'. . The ensuing confrontation was not pretty to watch, and did nothing for relations between dd1 and her teacher, which subsequently deteriorated to an all-time low that ended up with dd1 regularly spending more time outside the classroom door than she did inside, mainly for being a lippy little toad, and hideous incident with said teacher shouting at me during a parents' evening. Your ds may be right, but he may also want to learn that some battles are not worth fighting. I spent a lot of time in Y5 explaining the concept of 'Pyrrhic victory' to dd1...

For my proof-reading job I have to change those spellings to '-ise, but when I write my own books, my editor at Macmillan changes those spellings to '-ize'.

Just as NBNC says.

frogs, ds has gone in today keen to say something to the teacher, as she did make fun of him 'not living in America.' I fear she doesn't like him much already (very bright but possibly lippy with it) and now having read your post am worried I may have a similar situation to yours developing. Oh well, too late now.

Oxford University Press uses -ize. Both are correct and should be acceptable in a spelling test. Surely an English teacher should be aware of this type of issue (as well as Oxford comma etc.).

-ise is the correct British spelling. When Webster wrote his dictionary, he simplified all the spellings for Americans [snigger], making them all more straightforward. So, because it sounds like a z, it's spelled with a z. I think both are accepted spellings now, but I still think the -ise ending is better. In the same way that night is much classier than nite.

Ooooh, I love this one . I am with Mabanana. ize is the traditional British ending for SOME but not all words. Using ise for everything is just the easy option for people who dont know the difference and our use of it has nothing to do with copying American usage - that's just a myth. The sloppy, blanket use of ise in British English started after the Second World War.

I stick firmly with tradition and Fowler's and use ize, particularly for journal papers unless the journal specifically requests ise - but not many I publish in do.

More ranting here:
www.metadyne.co.uk/ize.html

I would send a letter strongly criticizing the teacher so she recognizes her mistake!

What Bink and Surprise not "Surprize" ) said. I always use -ise. Looks better. Bill Bryson did a whole section on this in "Troublesome Words"

Sorry, that was very badly typed, especially considering this is Pedants'Corner. I do apologise

Oh I like this thread. If ize is actually correct did it travel over with the first English settlers, like "I guess" and "gotten" etc? If so, then ise would be incorrect in the US but both would be correct here, non? I might start using ize now after believing it to be American

The Guardian guide to English says -ise for everything except capsize.

"Using ise for everything is just the easy option for people who dont know the difference and our use of it has nothing to do with copying American usage - that's just a myth. The sloppy, blanket use of ise in British English ..."

Who on this thread is saying "ise for everything"? Who's advocating blanket use? (Apart from the Guardian style guide, that's a very amusing counterpoint)

Think you've got your own hobbyhorse there, and you're trying to create a place for it. Sorry, but Pedants' Corner is a bit subtler than that. Which is nice.