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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

I decided that I would use ‘ize’ endings about 23 years ago, and I was in good company as many newspapers did so too. Oxford Spelling, as it is known (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling) has fallen out of favour in domestic use, but is still found in international use, as my own observation.

On my own choice, I felt that there were not enough ‘Z’s in everyday writing, and that it was too good a letter to ignore.

It is bloody annoying that device dictionaries do not support this. I have occasionally switched to US English but this is not quite right. Knowing the correct suffix is a bit of a minefield.

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Some of the international use might be because the United Nations uses Oxford spelling [1]. My employer does too.

GNU Aspell has several variants of "British English", including "British English (United Kingdom) [-ize suffixes and with accents]". KDE seems to use the same dictionary, so in KDE applications I have full support for "Oxford spelling".

There's a Firefox extension which includes -ize endings, but also includes -ise endings, so it's less useful.

[1] http://dd.dgacm.org/editorialmanual/ed-guidelines/style/spel...

[2] http://aspell.net/

[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/british-engli...

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) uses British English too.

Not all of the ise/ize endings are interchangable, so the Firefox extension might be correct. -ize is only applicable for words with a Greek root, I believe, which is why choosing Oxford English was hardly a masterstroke on my part but it does make things more interesting.

I have little experience of Aspell short of seeing it pop up as a dependency now and then, but I will now try and attempt incorporating it into my Mac's dictionary, ideally it would work on iOS as well.

The Firefox extension includes both versions, so I see a red underline for advertize (usage is archaic), but not for either realize or realise.

  aspell -d en_GB-ize-w_accents list < file-to-check

is the command to merely list spelling errors.

I have occasionally switched to US English but this is not quite right.

You might try Canadian English. It mostly uses -ize, but still retains -our in colour, honour, et cetera. There remain a few things that are more American than British (such as tire and aluminum), but it is probably a lot closer to what you are looking for.

Neato. I actually tried Australian English for a while, but let me do the switcheroo to Canadian and see.

Australian would have been counterproductive, as there was a time when it could be said Australia uses -ise; Britain prefers -ize and America use -ize.

Nowadays I have no idea if there'r any distiction - maybe just permitting one to spell “program” correctly?

Before computer dictionaries one Australian newspaper used “color, -ise” as its spelling which I find preferable.

> On my own choice, I felt that there were not enough ‘Z’s in everyday writing, and that it was too good a letter to ignore.

This made me smile, thanks! As a Brit I've always liked that English is very well described, but as equally is open to individual interpretation and expression. I've personally tried to carve out my own wee expressions and twists over the years and wish to encourage my daughter to do the same when her time comes... my only concern there is how that will play with her English teachers!

Me too, it's really annoying to have autocorrect keep trying to switch it to an s, even though it's perfectly correct.

The Z being rare only adds to it's character.

*its, no possessive apostrophe required - like "his" and "her :)

I used to correct people who made this error, but I've stopped since realizing my phone's autocorrect sneakily turns its to it's every damn time regardless of the context.

What type of phone? As for my iPhone, it’s in better command of its senses, for I typed this sentence on it without manually adding or removing apostrophes.

Android's keyboard is just another app, and is easily changed, including by the manufacturer.

SwiftKey works very well for me (and came installed on a Sony phone). Sometimes people comment that it flips between both dansk og engelsk very smoothly, which is useful when throwing a name or address like "Jesper lives on Christianshavns Torv, København" into an English sentence.

*"her", quotation marks should come in pairs. :)

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