UK searchers starting to prefer US spellings
January 21, 2010
3 Comments
Searchers in the UK are starting to prefer the US spelling of some words. Although we can still spell centre, colour and theatre, with the following words the US spelling is now searched for more often than the UK version:
- donut vs doughnut
- yogurt vs yoghurt
- fetus vs foetus
Here are the graphs from Google Insights to show this - the blue line is the UK spelling, the red line the US one.
Donut vs doughnut
Donut has been preferred since 2007 or so
Yogurt vs yoghurt
Yogurt overtook yoghurt in 2009
Fetus vs foetus
These were neck and neck until about 2007.
No wonder Google is having problems with spelling if searchers can't spell ...
From those examples, I think it's just a case of people not being able to spell properly, than preferring to spell the US way!
Yes, sorry, I didn't mean prefer as in conscious decision - I was just looking for a shorter word than "starting to use more often"!
Haha, fair enough