English and English

As you may be aware, while I live in the US now, I’m originally from the UK.  As such, part of the editing process we’re currently going through here is checking carefully through the manuscript for the occasional British English spelling that may have slipped through my ongoing process of acculturation.

With one exception.

See, “humor” and “honor” and “color” look right to me, now.  Ending words with “-ize”?  No problem!  Single-ell “traveler” and double-ell “skillful”, “-er”-ing my “-re”s, all now acquired habits.  I can even deal with “maneuver” and “aluminum”, much though my family might disown me for it.

But I just can’t spell it “sulfide”.  Or, indeed, “sulfur”.  Can’t.  Won’t.  The line must be drawn here, because this is the one place where – six years after moving here – our orthography still makes my eyeballs bleed.

So that particular exception is going to be stetted.  I feel no shame.