Recognize / recognise ?

[WriggleJiggle]

Which one do I use and why does my spell check accept both?

IMO recognize is US, recognise is UK. Most word processing packages will accept both depending on your language settings

AllThreeWays - I agree.

While we are at it - can I have a bit of a rant about 'gotten'. This is not a word in the English language. It is used in everyday speech by Americans and I am hearing it too often on TV news programmes.

Please can we stop using it - thats better.

So if it were written in a very important document, in the UK, would I be right in pointing it out as a mistake? Or is it so commonly spelt either way that it doesn't matter?

It's a valid variation not a mistake. My dictionary (Collins) actually has it first, then recogniSe with no comment on which is most common in the UK.

Gotten used to be used in British English but fell out of favour. "Ill-gotten gains" is one example of how it remained in our language.

As Fowler says (or was it Partridge?) both are correct, 'ize' more so.

It's a Greek subfix and sounds like it is a 'z' so it is probably a 'z', except franchise, which is French, apparently.

I use recognize.

Oh, and just because the Americans spell something one way, doesn't mean it's wrong. They often have an older version of English.

SweetestThing - you are right, I had forgotten that Old English expression.

I think it is the context that Amercians use it in which sounds all wrong to me. The use the word 'gotten' when they mean 'become'. For example, here is one from a Bloomberg News article reccently:

"The business has gotten tougher than I?ve seen it"

I usually prefer "-ise" as it seems more English, but apparently that's not necessarily the case.

the school sec once pulled me up on a spelling ( I am cdn and use -ize endings, they aren't wrong at all....) I wasn't there but another member of staff defended me - as she should have done!

Variants - explained here. Gotten is an interesting example of language evolution - clearly in common use at the time the Mayflower sailed, but then dropped out of British English use, but was retained by English-speaking American settlers. Not sure whether the meaning of "become" is original, but it strikes me as a small, rather than large shift in meaning.

Ramona, doesn't Canadian English have quite a mixture of what we might describe as British and US variants in spelling?

I would say more British, but I'm from the East Coast which is very 'English' . I would always use -our for colour, neighbour, etc but ize endings.

Agree about "gotten". Ugh.

I used -ise spellings in my first book and the copy editor changed them all to -ize on the grounds that the OED used this. Seems odd but it's right.

Weeelll - I guess "right" in the sense that it's consistent with the OED - but the OED tries to record common usage so if everyone started using the -ise endings, the OED would catch up and change its own usage accordingly. Funny sort of circle, really.

That's interesting. I'll keep quiet then. Thankyou.

I don't mind -ze in certain contexts but I do in things like analyZe (analyst, analysis therefore analyse).

At one point I decided that the over-use of -ize, -yze etc. was introduced by Scrabble players so they could get more use out of the letter Z.

You may be on to something there, thumbwitch!