thesis british spelling

American English vs. British English in Research Manuscripts: A Free Guide

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This free guide provides an overview of the most common spelling differences in research papers when choosing American English or British English.

Updated on December 4, 2012

In a simpler world, English would be written the same way everywhere. However, when Noah Webster set out to create an American English dictionary in the early 1800s, he did more than just add new words to British English: he also revised the spelling of many common words to eliminate what he saw as unnecessary letters. His new spellings were adopted in the US but not the UK, and these spelling differences remain to this day.

The list below is intended to provide an overview of the most common spelling differences between British and American English. The words beginning each list are intended to establish overall patterns, whereas the words in italics towards the end of the lists are examples of deviations from the rule. Remember that you can choose between “English (U.S.)” and “English (U.K.)” in Microsoft Word when setting the language for your document. This change allows the spell check to help catch these differences in spelling.

Click here to download a list of American English and British English spelling differences for future reference.

-ize (-yze)/-ise

American/british.

characterize/characterise

prioritize/prioritise

specialize/specialise

analyze/analyse

catalyze/catalyse

size /s ize

exercise / exercise

The products of the catalyzed reaction were characterized using specialized equipment/The products of the catalysed reaction were characterised using specialised equipment.

behavior/behaviour

color/colour

favor/favour

contour / contour

Because of its decolorization behavior , this material is favored /Because of its decolourisation behaviour , this material is favoured .

center/centre

fiber/fibre

liter/litre

parameter / parameter

Five milliliters of the mixture containing the fibers was pipetted on the center of the slide/Five millilitres of the mixture containing the fibres was pipetted on the centre of the slide.

e/(ae or oe)

ameba/amoeba

anesthesia/anaesthesia

diarrhea/diarrhoea

leukemia/leukaemia

cesium/caesium

The patient with leukemia was given anesthesia before the procedure/The patient with leukaemia was given anaesthesia before the procedure.

defense/defence

practice (noun and verb)/ practice (noun) /practise (verb)

license (noun and verb)/licence (noun)/ license (verb)

defensive / defensive

advice (noun) and advise (verb) / advice (noun) and advise (verb)

The defense attorney had practiced law for over thirty years/The defence attorney had practised law for over thirty years.

-/e, -og/-ogue

aging/ageing

acknowledgment/acknowledgement

judgment/judgement

analog/analogue

dialog/dialogue

dying/dyeing (from die/dye) / dying/dyeing (from die/dye)

The aging analog -to-digital converter is slowly dying/The ageing analogue -to-digital converter is slowly dying.

-l/-ll OR -ll/-l

fulfill/fulfil

enroll/enrol

skill , skillful/ skill , skilful

labeled/labelled

signaling/signalling

propelled / propelled

revealing / revealing

The skillful student noted that the drop in enrollment may be signaling a problem with the study design. The skilful student noted that the drop in enrolment may be signalling a problem with the study design.

This list of differences between American English and British English is by no means exhaustive, but we hope that it helps give you an idea of the distinctions between the two styles of writing. For guaranteed correct word usage, trust one of our editors to edit your manuscript . If you have questions about any particular word, please contact us .

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British vs. American Spelling – Finding a Consistent Scholarly Voice in PhD Theses

Posted by Rene Tetzner | Oct 26, 2021 | PhD Success | 0 |

Chapter 5: Finding Your Scholarly Voice in Correct and Consistent Written English  

Most students who have advanced to the level of doctoral research will have a good idea of what scholarly prose should be – you may already, for instance, have published articles in reputable scholarly journals before beginning your doctoral research. However, a doctoral thesis places new demands on an author: the thesis is, for one, almost certainly the longest piece of writing you have ever attempted, so you will need to sustain an argument over several chapters and bring it to an appropriate conclusion. This involves introducing many factual details and threads of thought and tying them together in a variety of intellectually productive ways, and it also requires deep, logical and creative thinking. It will necessitate variations in your writing style to avoid prose that is repetitious and potentially dull to readers, but must nonetheless remain professional, clear and correct as well as maintaining consistency across numerous details. Whether English is your first language and you consider yourself an aficionado of formal writing or not, this chapter will prove helpful by providing you with advice on a number of matters that academic and scientific writers of English prose tend to find particularly challenging. It relies upon the best style guides and the general expectations associated with academic and scientific writing at the doctoral level and beyond. For further assistance with various aspects of scholarly writing, the open-access Purdue Online Writing Lab (1995–2015) may prove particularly helpful.

Depending on your English language skills and your confidence in them, you may want to use the information in this chapter as a guide to correct style while you write up your thesis or you may wish to consult it only after your thesis is drafted to ensure that you have not incorporated incorrect, inconsistent or otherwise problematic elements in your writing. Whatever the case may be, this and the following three chapters should be used in conjunction with the first part of this book on the requirements and progressive writing of a thesis, with the principles outlined here applied to the writing-up process as necessary. These chapters [1] are not intended to replace any university or department guidelines you are required to observe or any style guides recommended by those guidelines and/or your thesis committee, but they may well provide details and present options for resolving problematic matters not covered by such guidance. Accuracy is certainly the central key to much of what I have to say in these chapters, but if anything could be called an appropriate mantra to keep in mind as you write, it is ‘consistency, consistency, consistency.’

[1] Please note that some information and examples in Parts II and III of this book on writing formal scholarly English, formatting and presenting academic and scientific prose in appropriate ways, producing consistent and complete bibliographical references and using effective techniques for integrating direct quotations have been borrowed and adapted from Olson 2014a and especially Olson 2014b.

5.1 British versus American Spelling

There are two main forms of formal English: British and American. A thesis written in English should use one of these forms consistently, and university or department guidelines (or the style guides they recommend) may indicate which form of English is most acceptable. However, many doctoral candidates whose first language is not English and even some whose first language is may not be aware of the nature and extent of the variations between the two forms. Setting the default language to either British or American in a word-processing program such as Word can be helpful for catching and correcting many words, but this is far from foolproof. Most good English dictionaries will note spelling variations, but some dictionaries do not indicate in all cases whether the spelling variants provided are determined by the differences between British and American English. I therefore present the following list (based primarily on Butcher et al., 2006, and Ritter, 2005) as a guide to the most common variants.

The list above is by no means exhaustive or conclusive and, as its examples demonstrate, there can be considerable overlap in usage, with each form of English using the spellings more common to the other at times. However, if this list is consulted in conjunction with a good British or American dictionary that notes the variants common in the other form of English, most uncertainties can be resolved. If you find that certain words you need to use in your thesis prove especially problematic simply because it is impossible to decide which spelling is British and which is American even after consulting dictionaries and whatever additional online help might be available, there is a good chance that the spelling variants are not specifically linked to either form of English and so can be used in both. In such cases, the goal is to adopt and use one form of each word consistently throughout the thesis. Beyond the spelling variants listed above, there are a number of usages that vary between British and American English. Examples include ‘different from’ versus ‘different than,’ ‘got’ versus ‘gotten,’ ‘hire’ versus ‘rent,’ ‘petrol’ versus ‘gas(oline),’ ‘mobile’ versus ‘cell (phone),’ ‘first-year student’ versus ‘freshman’ and ‘aeroplane’ versus ‘airplane’ (with the British form first in each case). For some of these terms, an additional concern is whether or not the intended audience will understand them. Most academic and scientific work is written in the twenty-first century with at least the possibility of international readers in mind, so it can be helpful to use a term that will be universally understood (‘mobile phone,’ for instance, instead of ‘mobile’ or ‘cell’) or to provide a brief explanation on first use (that ‘petrol’ in Britain, for example, is the fuel known as ‘gas’ or ‘gasoline’ in the United States).

Why PhD Success?

To Graduate Successfully

This article is part of a book called "PhD Success" which focuses on the writing process of a phd thesis, with its aim being to provide sound practices and principles for reporting and formatting in text the methods, results and discussion of even the most innovative and unique research in ways that are clear, correct, professional and persuasive.

The assumption of the book is that the doctoral candidate reading it is both eager to write and more than capable of doing so, but nonetheless requires information and guidance on exactly what he or she should be writing and how best to approach the task. The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples.

The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples. PhD Success provides guidance for students familiar with English and the procedures of English universities, but it also acknowledges that many theses in the English language are now written by candidates whose first language is not English, so it carefully explains the scholarly styles, conventions and standards expected of a successful doctoral thesis in the English language.

Individual chapters of this book address reflective and critical writing early in the thesis process; working successfully with thesis supervisors and benefiting from commentary and criticism; drafting and revising effective thesis chapters and developing an academic or scientific argument; writing and formatting a thesis in clear and correct scholarly English; citing, quoting and documenting sources thoroughly and accurately; and preparing for and excelling in thesis meetings and examinations. 

Completing a doctoral thesis successfully requires long and penetrating thought, intellectual rigour and creativity, original research and sound methods (whether established or innovative), precision in recording detail and a wide-ranging thoroughness, as much perseverance and mental toughness as insight and brilliance, and, no matter how many helpful writing guides are consulted, a great deal of hard work over a significant period of time. Writing a thesis can be an enjoyable as well as a challenging experience, however, and even if it is not always so, the personal and professional rewards of achieving such an enormous goal are considerable, as all doctoral candidates no doubt realise, and will last a great deal longer than any problems that may be encountered during the process.

Interested in Proofreading your PhD Thesis? Get in Touch with us

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Rene Tetzner

Rene Tetzner's blog posts dedicated to academic writing. Although the focus is on How To Write a Doctoral Thesis, many other important aspects of research-based writing, editing and publishing are addressed in helpful detail.

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I am writing my thesis in British English. Can I still use MLA style?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook . For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook .

Yes. The MLA’s system for documenting sources is used throughout the world and may be adapted to many contexts. Follow the guidelines in the  MLA Handbook for your works-cited-list and in-text citations and make adjustments for British spelling and punctuation.

British and American English

Why the correct variant matters for your academic paper.

When preparing an academic paper in English, one of the key pieces of information to have is the target country. There are significant differences between written English in the United Kingdom and the United States, and using an academic translator or editor who speaks your target variant is the best way to ensure that your ideal reader is able to fully understand your text.

Lexical differences

As would be expected from two countries separated by an entire ocean, there have arisen a vast number of differences between British and American vocabularies.

As an example, let’s look at infancy in the two countries: British babies ride in a pushchair, sleep in a cot or a Moses basket, wear a nappy under their babygrow, use dummies, and are cared for by their mummy. Their American counterparts ride in a stroller, sleep in a crib or a bassinet, wear a diaper under their onesie, use pacifiers, and are cared for by their mommy.

These differences extend to all categories of one’s vocabulary -- so much so that linguist Lynne Murphy has dedicated an entire blog to examining lexical differences. The best way of rooting them out is by having a native speaker of the target variant review an English text for issues.

Orthographic differences

The most obvious of these is -ise/-ize verbs, where a UK-based writer would use memorise, for example, and their American counterpart would use memorize. Another frequently occurring difference is the omission of the letter ‘u’ from words like favourite, so that in the US, it is spelled favorite.

However, there are a number of other spelling differences as well, many of which are of particular relevance to writers addressing scientific or medical topics. Words such as paediatric and foetus are spelled differently in the States, resulting in pediatric and fetus. Likewise, certain units of measure end in –re in the UK (metre) but –er in the US (meter).

Other spelling differences aren’t covered by a general rule but occur in specific instances, such as aluminium, which becomes aluminum in the US.

Grammatical differences

There are fewer grammatical differences than lexical or orthographic ones, but they still exist. For example, if you ask a British person to call you later, they may say “I will do,” but an American will drop “do” and just say “I will.”

Prepositional phrases also change between the two variants, as the Cambridge Dictionary points out : British people live in Elm Street, while Americans live on Birch Street. Likewise, speakers of British English say they’re attending a party at the weekend, whereas Americans prefer on the weekend.

Cultural references

It’s easy to overlook the importance of cultural references within a text. While Brits and Americans share many cultural references, others are unique to one of the two cultures.

As an example, both variants of English use sports-related metaphors to express a variety of concepts, but sports that are popular in one country aren’t necessarily popular in the other. The expression playing with a straight bat, derived from cricket, might be used by a British English speaker but is opaque to an American unfamiliar with the sport. Meanwhile, the same American might refer to someone as a Monday-morning quarterback, which comes from American football.

Editors and translators tasked with ensuring that a paper uses a specific variant of English should be on the lookout for not only spelling differences, which are easy to spot, but also for grammatical, lexical, and idiomatic differences.

For a text to be best understood by its target reader, it is key to have it translated or edited by a native speaker who can sift through the text and identify any idiosyncrasies that don’t fit with the target variant of English. When preparing an academic paper for submission to a journal, authors should always confirm what variant of English the journal editors expect to see and advise their translator and/or editor accordingly to ensure a correct final product.

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Should I use American or British English in my thesis?

American vs. british english.

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Are there guidelines from the educational institution?

What if my study program has no requirements for this, always use academic english, extra tip: set your spelling checker to the right language, need help our editors will check your thesis.

You are writing your thesis in English. That part is obvious. But should you use American or British English? For example, should you use 'labour' or 'labor'? Each study program or thesis supervisor has its own guidelines for this. We can help you make the right choice.

Some universities and colleges have a clear guideline regarding which variant of English you should use for your assignments. Bear in mind that the preference of your thesis supervisor always takes priority. If your supervisor asks you to use British English, but the university website says otherwise, then you should still use British English. 

Some universities and colleges have a preference for a specific type of English. If you click on the links below, you can see what the following educational institutions think about this:

Erasmus University Rotterdam

University of Groningen

Eindhoven University of Technology

University of Twente

Universities and colleges that are not listed in this overview (and there are quite a few), have not expressed a clear preference for this on their website. In all these cases, ask your thesis supervisor whether you should use American or British English.  Many tutors do not have a strong view on this . They think it is important that you are consistent in the English you use. So, don't use American English and British English words interchangeably. If necessary, check a word in an online English dictionary if you are unsure whether you are using the correct variant.

Whether you write your thesis in American or British English, make sure that you always use academic English. This means that you use an academic style of writing for your thesis. You can read exactly what academic English means on our site. Also, beware of these common mistakes found in English-language theses.

Do you want to avoid accidentally using American words in your British-English text or vice versa? Don't forget to set your spelling checker in Word to the correct language style. Word then helps you to stay consistent with your use of American or British English.

Do you want to be sure that you have used academic English and that no awkward mistakes have crept into your thesis? Then, have the English editors of AthenaCheck check your thesis. They are native English speakers and experienced proofreaders. They can help you submit your thesis without errors, and in the right writing style. 

Did you accidentally mix up British and American English? They will correct this for you.

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Meaning of thesis in English

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• I wrote my thesis on literacy strategies for boys .
• Her main thesis is that children need a lot of verbal stimulation .
• boilerplate
• composition
• dissertation
• essay question
• peer review

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

thesis | American Dictionary

Examples of thesis, collocations with thesis.

These are words often used in combination with thesis .

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

Translations of thesis

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thesis noun

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What does the noun thesis mean?

There are eight meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun thesis . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

thesis has developed meanings and uses in subjects including

Entry status

OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.

How common is the noun thesis ?

How is the noun thesis pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the noun thesis come from.

Earliest known use

Middle English

The earliest known use of the noun thesis is in the Middle English period (1150—1500).

OED's earliest evidence for thesis is from before 1398, in a translation by John Trevisa, translator.

thesis is a borrowing from Greek.

Etymons: Greek θέσις .

Nearby entries

• thesaurus, n. 1823–
• thesaury, n. a1639–1708
• these, n. a1600–48
• these, pron. & adj. Old English–
• Thesean, adj. 1815–
• Theseid, n. 1725–
• Theseium, n. 1819–
• these-like, adj. 1644–
• thesial, adj. 1654
• thesicle, n. 1863–
• thesis, n. a1398–
• thesis-novel, n. 1934–
• thesis-play, n. 1902–
• thesmophilist, n. 1644–
• Thesmophorian, adj. 1891–
• Thesmophoric, adj. 1788–
• thesmothete, n. 1603–
• thesocyte, n. 1887–
• thesp, n. 1962–
• Thespian, adj. & n. 1675–
• Thespianism, n. 1914–

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Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for thesis, n..

thesis, n. was first published in 1912; not yet revised.

thesis, n. was last modified in March 2024.

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• new senses, phrases, and quotations which have been added in subsequent print and online updates.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into thesis, n. in March 2024.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

OED First Edition (1912)

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British or American English? -An investigation of awareness of the differences in British and American vocabulary and spelling

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Princess Lawer

British English is the variety of English taught in Ghanaian schools, but influences of American English due to different media exposure have affected students' use of English. The objective of this study was to investigate the extent to which University of Ghana students mix American English with British English and their ability to differentiate between the two varieties. It also sought to examine students' attitudes towards these two varieties of English. The sample group used in this investigation consisted of twenty students from University of Ghana. They filled in a questionnaire which investigated vocabulary and had a spelling dictation to investigate spelling. The study showed that all of the students mixed American and British features but could not differentiate between the two varieties. Though students chose British English as the correct form of English in Ghana, a majority of the students had a higher preference for American English. However, most of them thought that none of the two varieties was superior to the other. The study has shown that American English is gradually finding its way into the Ghanaian community and is affecting students' correct usage of British English.

PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge

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This thesis revolves around two main research questions: ‘Should the English used in the Netherlands be considered a second-language variety or should it simply be regarded as learner English?’ and ‘Can Schneider’s Dynamic Model be extended to account for non-postcolonial, Expanding Circle contexts such as the Netherlands?’ Chapter 1 describes the motivations for the project and the theoretical and methodological framework. Chapter 2 explores the relevant models in the field of World Englishes (WEs) and identifies a lack of in-depth research on European settings in general and the Netherlands in particular, despite their dynamism in terms of the spread and development of English. Chapters 3 to 5 address three criteria established to answer research question 1, concerning the functions of, attitudes towards and forms of English in the Netherlands, respectively. Chapter 3, on the functions of English in the Netherlands, develops a comprehensive sociolinguistic profile covering the history of English contact, the present demographics of English spread, and the domains of education, science, business, advertising, public administration and the media. It reveals a widespread assumption of English competence in daily life in the Netherlands and increasing intranational use of English to construct cosmopolitan, scholarly or subculture identities. On this basis, the chapter concludes that English functions as a second language in Dutch society. Chapter 4 explores the second criterion for research question 1, attitudes towards English, by way of a large-scale questionnaire. Some results support the notion of English as a second language in the Netherlands; for example, it is acquired in wider society and not just within the confines of the foreign-language classroom. Others, however, are indicative of a foreign or learner language; in particular, BrE remains the main target model and ‘Dutch English’ is rarely viewed in a positive light. The chapter also identifies three groups of people: an instrumental group, whose participants regard English as personally important, but place great value on Dutch as well; and two peripheral groups: an anglophile group and an anti-English group. Chapter 5 focuses on the third criterion for research question 1, the forms of English in the Netherlands. It first outlines a range of potential morphosyntactic, lexical and pragmatic/discoursal features of Dutch English. Next, it describes the development of the Corpus of Dutch English, the first Expanding Circle corpus based on the design of the written components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The chapter then presents a case study of the progressive aspect. The first part, a comparative corpus analysis, reveals no strict divide between Dutch English and the second-language varieties under investigation, yet marked differences compared to Dutch learner data. In the second part, a grammaticality judgement survey, some evidence of developing local norms is identified. The findings from chapters 3 to 5 make clear that, in answer to research question 1, the Netherlands cannot be said unequivocally to be either a second-language or a learner variety. It is acknowledged, however, that this is partly attributable to the categorical nature of the question. Therefore, Chapter 6 turns to research question 2, seeking to determine whether the developments in the Netherlands can better be explained by a developmental approach such as Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model. It identifies a number of developments in the Netherlands, both historical and present-day, that parallel the predictions of the first three phases of the Dynamic Model. However, as Schneider (2014) himself recently noted, these need to be selectively extracted from what is predominantly a colonial framework. The thesis concludes that this and other models need to move away from a colonisation-driven approach and towards a globalisation-driven one to explain the continued spread and evolution of English today.

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The results of the ANCOVAs revealed that using vocabulary learning software was more effective than using printed book on vocabulary learning, vocabulary breadth, and vocabulary depth of the participants. The results of the present study could help EFL course book designers, foreign language institutes, educational planners, material developers, teachers, and learners to provide a better context for EFL learning.

Despoina Panou

The present paper addresses the issue of English-Greek idiom translation in the news press and aims at giving a detailed description of the idiomtranslation strategies employed in the Greek financial press. To this end, 121 instances of idioms were examined, taken from a 101,202-word sample of 2009 news material translated into Greek. A new idiom classification was proposed distinguishing idioms into inward and outward, the former subdivided into cognitively and affectively-oriented idioms and the latter into general outward and business idioms. The results obtained indicate that business idioms accounted for the biggest percentage in the corpus examined whereas in terms of idiom-translation strategy, omission was the preferred strategy for both inward and outward idioms. With respect to the parameters that influence translators’ choices, it was argued that in adhering to idiomatic meaning, translators were prompted to take into account idiom and genre-related parameters. On the other hand, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, cognitive and genre parameters gained prominence when there was idiom literalization. Lastly, idiom omission seemed to rely on pragmatic, cognitive and genre parameters whereas idiom compensation largely depended on pragmatic and genre ones. On these grounds, a new idiom translation model is presented where it is assumed that an awareness of idioms’ sensitivity to genre conventions and a realization of the multiplicity of parameters that affect the choice of idiom-translation strategy are essential for appropriateness to be met in Greek financial news translation.

This research paper attempts to focus on the main and major differences and idiosyncrasies of grammar and grammar related issues in British and American English. These differences have a great influence on learning and using the English language. In fact, British and American English are one language having two (slightly) different grammars. Although there is a popular notion about American English to be more simplified and flexible, we have to keep it in mind about the subtleties, complexities and identifications too. American English is now different from its British mother and we could say it is more than another dialect due to its importance as well as control over the world affairs at present. The fall of the then USSR, the US popular media, open market, globalization, the internet etc have made American English more powerful than ever before. But still today, the number of British English users is more than that of American English. Sometimes, it is noticed by and large that the misuse and the misconception in handling these two major varieties of English pose various problems. So, the main concern of this current paper is to remove the possible mistakes and confusions about the two different but related varieties of English, specially in most of the areas of grammar, syntax and the like.

Daniela Graf

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research provides valuable insights for English Language Teaching (ELT). An ELF-based approach in ELT prepares students for global communication in English. The English language is used as a means of communication between speakers from a large range of first-language and socio-cultural backgrounds and with different experiences and levels of learning and using English. Research on ELF communication has shown that this English, mutually negotiated in each contact situation, is particularly flexible and fluid. The material and tasks in English textbooks should be adjusted to this use of English. On the phonological level, ELF research has focused on how intelligibility is established and maintained. The most influential work to date is Jenkin’s (2000) Lingua Franca Core (LFC), which presents a set of phonological features essential for intelligibility in ELF interactions. The LFC was a starting point for further, more process-based, studies. The results of these studies challenge established views on phonological proficiency. Phonological ELF research demands adjustments of teaching material. The empirical part of this thesis reviews the listening material and the pronunciation tasks in the textbook Global by Macmillan. Global is a recent six-level English course for adult learners of English for global communication. In the analysis, a selection of Global’s promotional texts is examined and contrasted to the conception of English reflected in the coursebooks and audio-CDs. The empirical investigation of the listening material primarily focuses on the linguistic background of the speakers and is complemented by an e-mail interview with a Macmillan representative. The pronunciation model underlying the course is examined, and the pronunciation tasks dealing with individual phonemes are compared with the LFC. Suggestions for working with the material in the ELF-based language classroom are given.

The Year’s Work in English Studies

Agnes Marszalek

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