Is it a grey or gray area???

[seeker]

Has anyone figured out the actual spelling of 'gray' or 'grey'?
"gray" has more google results, but I thought it was 'grey'.
It is now becoming 'gre(a)yer' for me.

What do you guys think?

 

[sdtrader]

Grey is prefered here in Canada and many other parts of the world. Americans use gray. It is another case of where American and international spelling varies.

Another is "cheque" and "check". I was deeply surprised the first time I saw the word check used for transfering funds and thought at the time it was lazy spelling but later found out it is quite acceptable.

There is in fact a vast multitude of words that have international as well as
American variants.

 

[Dan]

Firefox says "grey" isn't a word.
On dictionary.com, it seems like gray is the more correct form and m-w.com redirects from grey to gray.

 

[seeker]

but if you google it, it looks like gray has more results by a slight margin internationaly.
dictionary.com has 27 definitions for gray vs 20 for grey as well.
very confusing.

 

[sdtrader]

Firefox says "grey" isn't a word.

This is common when using American based software. Many spell checkers only recognize American spelling. Others from Great Britain or elsewhere will tell you that grey is the word they use.

 

[seeker]

google it.
the 'a' version (cant think of a better term for this gr(ae)y area), is contradicting itself.
UK sites foir example use both a and e. it even seems from my limites search that 'a' is more used.

 

[Dan]

it even seems from my limites search that 'a' is more used.

That's what I was showing.
Dictionary.com has about 6-7 definitions of "grey." The others say "see gray."

Just use whichever one you want. ;/

 

[sdtrader]

Absolutely, if you google gray you will get both results because both are used.
You will get more results for gray worldwide due to American inflence on the internet.
When I do a search for both words restricting it to pages from Canada there are many more results for "grey".

But as said you should use whatever you want.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I'm American and I use "grey". personally I think we should just conform all words to which are more efficient to type.. Grey wins... Check beats out cheque, sorry...

 

[verbster]

There are many common usage, punctuation and spelling differences between American and British English. Usually, spelling is the most obvious: color vs colour, recognize vs recognise and gray vs grey.

 

[Pound]

Yup:

US = Gray
UK = Grey

Therefore, your choice.

 

[Coopey]

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

grey

(US gray)

• adjective 1 of a colour intermediate between black and white, as of ashes or lead. 2 (of hair) turning grey or white with age. 3 (of the weather) cloudy and dull; without sun. 4 dull and nondescript: grey, faceless men. 5 not accounted for in official statistics: the grey economy.

• noun grey colour or pigment.

• verb (especially of hair) become grey with age.

— DERIVATIVES greyish adjective greyly adverb greyness noun.

— ORIGIN Old English.

gray

• noun Physics the SI unit of the absorbed dose of ionizing radiation, corresponding to one joule per kilogram.

— ORIGIN named after the English radiobiologist Louis H. Gray (1905-65).

So that's probably why there are more results for 'gray' than 'grey' they're both words in British (real) English...

 

[bgray]

definitely GRAY

 

[The Engineer]

I am developing a "gray" forum. I regged both versions and redirect the "grey" to "gray".
Bit of a pain but it covers both versions.

 

[Malaysia]

Well in Malaysia we are using the UK English as we were one of the commonwealth conutries so its Grey to us but of course like color vs Colour its just about UK english or US english . i guess whichever we will still understand it..

 

[mis_chiff]

I'm American. Check beats out cheque, sorry...

not in Canada,
"cheque" is the way it's spelled.
at least on my cheques

and grey is how I spell it but when I type it, it's telling me I'm wrong :lol:

 

[GreenGambler]

Thank god Im not the only person who has wondered about this.. Gray/Grey area.. LOL

I usually spell it gray.. but somtimes grey...lol

 

[htmlindex]

Has anyone figured out the actual spelling of 'gray' or 'grey'?
"gray" has more google results, but I thought it was 'grey'.
It is now becoming 'gre(a)yer' for me.

What do you guys think?

If you're talking about the actual color, it's grey

 

[tristanperry]

Grey has always been the standard English way of spelling it

'Gray' is the way that the new/slightly changed American English spells it.

 

[cache]

should reduce check to 4 letters chec or chek (LLLL rules), why do we need redundant letters?