Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours is hardly the first guidebook on Canadian spelling. It is merely the latest in a lineage dating back over 20 years. Often called style guides (a bit of a dismissive term, as this is not about looking good), the published advice on spelling that doesn’t come from dictionaries has usually been conflicting or contradictory. As the saying goes, the good thing about standards is there are so many to choose from, and that is certainly true here.
Each guidebook tends to disagree with the next. What’s of greatest interest is the fact that style guides have not converged as much as one would expect. There’s increasing agreement on Canadian spelling, and recent style guides are willing to agree to agree – to a point. But even guidebooks from the early 2000s are hobbled by their own publishers’ styles or by a simple desire to do things their own way even if nobody else really does. (In all the listings below, “this book” refers to the work under discussion, not the book you are reading now.)
As you’ll see, even trained linguists and experienced editors cannot resist a dollop of prescriptivism.
You can go back all the way to the ’70s to find reasonably well-researched discussions of Canadian spelling. Modern Canadian English Usage: Linguistic Change and Reconstruction by M.H. Scargill (1974) surveyed people in all ten provinces (but neither of the territories) and asked about their preferred spellings. This isn’t the best way to do it – if you make people think too much about spelling, they try to give you a smart answer instead of just naturally and automatically spelling the word.
This limitation of methodology is apparent in the results.
Canadians are almost equally divided on the use of the two variant spellings [of colour], with the young people
– “the young people”; isn’t it great? –
tending slightly towards the -our spelling.
Scargill found almost equal distributions of center/centre and gray/grey, but a preference for double-L spellings in words like travelled. Defence as a noun was a preferred spelling, except, curiously, among “the student population” (“the young people”?).
The Canadian government actually published its own style guide (via Dundurn Press, 1985). The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing cites an order-in-council of 12 June 1890 (note the year) declaring that “in all official documents, in the Canada Gazette, and in the Dominion Statutes, the English practice of our endings shall be followed.”
This book recaps U.S. and U.K. spellings (via representative lists of words) and gives a concise set of rules for Canadian spelling: “[T]he following variant spellings in the above list should be used: Endings in ize, ization, our, re; single l (as in instil) and ce; single l in words such as enrolment; ll in travelled, etc.; and e for digraphs (exception: aesthetic).”
The book also prefers shorter variants like sizable and lovable rather than -eable forms.
English-language newspapers across the country, especially smaller ones, adhere to Canadian Press or CP style. But CP style has changed over the years.
CP Stylebook: A Guide for Writers and Editors (Peter Buckley, editor; 1993) devotes a single column of printed text to spelling. It uses the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a reference, failing to note that it’s a British dictionary, then begs to differ with the COD’s spelling. In particular, Canadian Press claims that color, labor, and valor are “favored” spellings. (Actually, they say the spellings were “favored by Henry Fowler in Modern English Usage,” but clearly they agree with Fowler.)
The style guide prefers single-consonant compounds, like benefited and paralleled.
The Toronto Globe and Mail now calls itself Canada’s national newspaper. Some people parody that slogan and call the Globe “Toronto’s national newspaper.” Nonetheless, the Globe takes itself seriously enough to publish its own style guide.
The 1976 version (The Globe and Mail Style Book, E.C. Phelan, editor) says quite bluntly :“Our style is to use the -or ending in such words as humor, labor, honor, valor, etc.... The style used in Canadian Government publications and official records (always -our) is based on an Order-in-Council passed in 1891 [note the year – wasn’t it 1890?]and never repealed. We do not follow this style except in rare cases where a very precise text is required.”
There’s a bit of jumbled business about a few other spelling bugbears, coming down on the side of archeology (but manoeuvre) and defence/offence/licence as nouns. Phelan provides a four-step outline to determining single vs. double consonants in words – flannelled, carolled, traveller, yes, but parallelled, no. (That just scratches the surface; single and double consonants mingle.) And the book refuses to offer an instruction about verb endings: “There is no general rule governing choice of the verbal endings -ise and -ize.” Well, actually, there is a rule (use -ize/-yze).
By 1993, and now under the editorship of J.A. McFarlane and Warren Clements, the Globe had finally decided to be honest and admit that it was making things up as it went along: “The Globe and Mail has developed its own style to maintain consistency in its pages.” (Well, that’s the problem: Then you aren’t consistent with the rest of the country.)
McFarlane and Clements prefer -our endings across the board, and give a helpful list of exceptional derivatives – discolor (discoloration). They’re an -re house, not an -er house (centre, litre). They’re not wild about doubled consonants (focused). But there’s no mention of verb forms using -ize, except the general advice to follow the Funk & Wagnalls (remember them?) Canadian College Dictionary.
The Editors’ Association of Canada’s volume Editing Canadian English (second edition, 2000) provides a superb inventory of the spelling recommendations of several dictionaries. But it cautions against giving too much credence to dictionaries:
The problem is that dictionaries do not necessarily keep categories of spellings “pure”; their first entry for a particular word may be based on the frequency with which that spelling is encountered
– yes, that is exactly what dictionaries do –
rather than principles of consistency.... Yet internal consistency is what a particular work requires.... We recommend strongly that spellings not be mixed within each of the categories [listed].... If -ll- is used in travelled, it should also be used in signalling. Nevertheless, mixing categories – for example, using labor/neighbor and centre/metre – is truly Canadian.
(The labor/neighbor example isn’t correct. Even by the year 2000, it was known that -our was the dominant, hence correct, spelling.)
This book’s inventory of dictionaries shows conclusively that most dictionaries (four out of five surveyed) agree on a few Canadian spelling patterns – centre, behaviour, paralleled – but disagree on some others. Rather incredibly, two out of three dictionaries authorize spellings like authorise.
Two editions of this reference work, edited by Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine of the Strathy Language Unit at Queen’s University, are available (1997 and 2007). They plunk down with some heft on one’s desk, and purport to provide definitive answers. But they’re hobbled by the ideology of their own publisher, Oxford.
As a usage manual and not a dictionary, Guide to Canadian English Usage provides lengthy explanations of specific words and situations. The issue of doubling a final consonant (focused or focussed? benefiting or benefitting?) gets almost a full page, and admits that not everyone agrees on every case.
On the basic issue of “spelling, Canadian,” the book states the truth and states that Canadians “tend to be consistent within some major categories. For example, most Canadians choose the -ize/-yze endings (also favoured by Americans) over the -ise/-yse endings more common in Britain.” We also tend to use double consonants (except when we don’t, according to the other section that handles that topic).
The book gives a handy list of British-derived spellings we prefer (axe, catalogue, centre, cheque, fulfil [double-consonant alert], grey, manoeuvre) and the doppelgänger list of American spellings we prefer (analyze, carburetor, criticize, encyclopedia, judgment, medieval, movable, peddler, plow, program, raccoon [as opposed to racoon], woollen). However, the editors go right off the rails in claiming that “Canadians are divided over whether to use -our or -or endings.” In truth, this is one place Canadians enjoy national unity – we use -our.
Next: A skeptical view →
← Previous: The Coquitlam effect: Why your spellchecker won’t help you