Recognize Not Recognise

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Recognize Not Recognise

Posted on October 27th, 2009 in Writing by sunshine926

The correct spelling of this word is recognize.

After reading a number of articles, I have noticed that the word recognize is often misspelled. Some people tend to spell the word recognize with an S instead of a Z. This is not the right spelling of the word: recognise. For those of you who don’t know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to write it down somewhere so you don’t forget. Don’t rely too much on spell checker because it is not 100% accurate. Sometimes I end up running it several times just to get rid of the yellow or orange glitch and it highlights words that are spelled correctly. For instance, if there’s a word that spell checker doesn’t recognize, just add it to the dictionary.

24 Responses to “Recognize Not Recognise”

lillyrose
October 27th, 2009 at 11:03 am

Recognise is spelt with an S in England, also realise rather than realize, and visualise rather than visualize. These are just a few but there are more. Good article and well pointed out.
ken bultman
October 27th, 2009 at 11:06 am

Point well taken however the British often spell words differently than those of us in the Colonies. The one in question may be one of them.
Hugo La Rosa
October 27th, 2009 at 11:47 am

Very good Marlene. Another one I really enjoyed. You are a great teacher.

Sincerely,

Hugo
sunshine926
October 27th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

Thanks Lily Rose and Mr. Bultman for clearing that out. I didn’t know that in England this was the case.
K.Reshma
October 27th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

Enjoyed reading it
Sourav
October 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

There are few differences in the spelling between Britain’s and American english. Another example is ‘color’. In Queen’s english it is ‘Colour’. Same goes with ‘favor’. British english writes ‘Favour’. And there are many more.
Peter Cimino
October 27th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Yep, I see this all the time. Good catch and good advice.
Teves
October 27th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

Well done…
Papa Sparks
October 27th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

And of course, there is always Google to quickly check. I have students do this to check a phrase or how to use a word correctly. Sometimes it helps to see a word being used in a sentence, too.
Frances Lawrence
October 27th, 2009 at 6:51 pm

This shows that it is important to know who you are writing for. An English audience would would consider that recognise is the correct spelling and they would find the American spelling distracting.
Snooky
October 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

I do not think that I have used the word in any of my articles yet. But, sometimes writers like me spell words for impact rather than correctness to keep a thought flooooowing.
CA Johnson
October 27th, 2009 at 7:06 pm

This was a very interesting article, Marlene.
chitragopi
October 27th, 2009 at 8:59 pm

The Chamber’s Dictionary gives both the spellings. Even American and British usage differs, sometimes.
Unofre Pili
October 27th, 2009 at 9:50 pm

Thanks for the reminder marlene. Indeed, I often get bogged at this important point you raised.
AlmaG
October 27th, 2009 at 10:19 pm

Wonderful article! Sometimes there’s a conflict between the proper spelling in American English and British English that would make us think that it’s misspelled (if you’re an american) but not when you’re British.
Louie Jerome
October 28th, 2009 at 5:32 am

In British English we use ’s’ instead of ‘z’ in ‘recognise’ and various other words. We also write ‘colour’, ‘centre’, ‘metre’ and various others. These are not misspellings in British English.
Julia L. White
October 28th, 2009 at 11:34 am

You can identify where a writer is often by identifying a word that seems to be spelled incorrectly. It isn’t an error, depending on which side of the ocean you’re on!
Steve Newman
October 28th, 2009 at 1:00 pm

As someone has already pointed out – it does depend on which side of the Atlantic you live.
sunshine926
October 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

Anyone that I have not added to my page as either fans or friends, I am not interested in you telling me what’s the proper way to write because I already know how to write and my grammatical skills are superb. I wasn’t even aware that this was not an American writing site. And neither was I aware that there are certain words such as recognize and recognise, mom and mum spelled differently. I am not here to offend anyone , but it seems that alot of the writers are on the defensive today. Sorry if I offended anyone.
SheBear
October 28th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Yep I’m a Brit too, and don’t worry I’m not offended! As soon as I started reading your article I realised you must be from across th pond. Trouble is if you write these sort of articles, you have to be prepared for those sort of comments – nobody likes being ‘told how to suck eggs’. Anyway, your article caught my eye, I read it and you got a comment out of me – so mission accomplised :O)
RJ Chamberlain
October 28th, 2009 at 2:36 pm

Depends where you are from. I spell it with an S and always have. This is the correct spelling in most commonwealth countries. I think you probably need to check your facts before pushing this onto others. We are not all American.

RJ
Karen Gross
October 28th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

Apparently you chose the wrong word as an example, but your point is clear – there are some very unpolished articles getting posted on Triond. Spell check is easy to use – seems some writers are too lazy to even use it. In addition, spell check won’t help for homonyms – like there, their, and they’re.

I used to be a teacher, so spelling and grammatical errors are very distracting to me.
johnnydod
October 30th, 2009 at 2:34 am

Being a brit myself, might I just point out, it is all the others that spell words differently not us, as you all might just have forgot it is our language you are all using,
However the English language is rich because we have taken on-board many changes.
Saying that I still love you all.

PS “The party” part two is on its way
Good write marlenerami26
lovely honey
November 4th, 2009 at 2:04 pm

the spell chec here is CANADA ENGLISH, and in England\s Queens’ English

RECOGNISE IS THE RIGHT SPELLING

THE AMERICANS CUT SHORT AND Love
FLAVOR

wheras we in UK like it as

flavour .

Evertime one sets the spell check to local English
it as soon as it can ,switches back to the local dialect we have so many English versions

Indian Japanese Chinese USA British and now African

and so there is no end to it.

So lets forget it all and make enemies friends

thank god enemies is not spellt as

unnemmies