There’s a serious theory behind that, all about ‘grey issues’ and the fact that people don’t often have grey opinions… so really, if it is a grey issue, then that’s just because the black and white opinions are interspersed.

Just out of interest, is my spelling ‘grey’ jarring to those of you that use ‘gray’?

I once received an email from a reader (I presume, though not an observant one) telling me that I had spelled a number of words incorrectly in my posts, and included the following list:

These are wrong –

  • Colour – there’s no U in it
  • Grey – is spelled with A
  • Favourite – why do you keep adding U to everything?
  • Criticise – I bet you feel silly for getting this wrong

I was going to email them back, explain that I’m British and tell them that actually, I thought they were wroung.

In the end I figured they wouldn’t get the joke.

Anyway, I did think about it though, and US spelling stands out a mile to me… although, sometimes I use it – partially because I agree that the US spelling is better, partly because I know that the majority of my readership are from the US and partly because I’m too lazy to change the spell-checking thingy to a British dictionary.

…But it doesn’t look wrong, just different.

Phlegm, however, looks wrong and is spelled the same across the Atlantic.

Weird and grief too, buoy and amount.

I have another theory, that I’m not alone in finding that some words just look wrong.

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