Blog

How Do You Spell “Organization”?

This is a word you get to write quite a lot as soon as you start doing any sort of business writing, be it a blog, Web site copy or a White Paper. This is particularly true if you are writing about entities that are not businesses, such as charities, government departments, or educational institutions. Organizations is a good collective noun.

But what of its spelling? And that of other words that can end in –ise or –ize?

There doesn’t appear to be any definitive answer. The Oxford English spelling, as used in the Oxford English Dictionary, uses –ize, which is generally considered to be the American version, while most people in the UK now use “–ise”.

Have a look at this Wikipedia entry.

If you were reading this hoping for a definitive answer, sorry. I would say consistency and a sturdy defence are in order. Incidentally, “defence” comes up as a miss-spell thanks to my US spell-checker. Must get round to changing that sometime.

Comments are closed.