What is the difference between center and centre

On the other hand, English is the overwhelmingly dominant language in our country. This is because we were settled and founded by English-speaking people from England and the rest of Britain. Over time, the language spoken by the peoples on the separate sides of the Atlantic diverged somewhat from each other, and we were left with similar but distinct dialects. Like Reply Report 8 months ago. Ayodele Akinwunmi. Like Reply Report 1 1 year ago. Gavin Aren. Could you say 'center of a circle' and 'british center of intelligence' in british english?

Or would they both have to be spelt 'centre'? Like Reply Report 1 2 years ago. Cancel Report. Create a new account. Log In. Powered by CITE. There is no such thing. There is English, and there are mistakes. This is somewhat untrue. One must understand the history of English in order to comment on its modern state. In some instances, many of the same words could have entirely different spellings depending on the dialect that a document was written in and the scribe or monk who wrote it.

That is to say, these two instances are not the only occurrence of English spelling varying in nature. If was only after the Printing Press was invented that spelling started to shift into a more unified form, and even into the Enlightenment Era, spelling sometimes varied in nature.

In reality, neither system can be considered correct or incorrect since English spelling has always varied. I was also trying to say that that the word life could also be spelt as lyf, lif, or lijf or any other scribal or dialectal preference. Now here is a conundrum! These can be seen at the British Library in London.

USA English is often a phonetic spelling, and to state that the UK English is the correct spelling of a word is no more correct than to claim that the US spelling is.

Both are correct for the simple reason that that is the common usage in the country concerned. Everytime I saw the word centre here in the U. S I would pronounce it Sen-trey. I always thought it was a fancy way of saying center or naming your business with that spelling. Born and raised here in America and been indoctrinated and ethnocentric simultaneously I would always say why are things spelled different and why do Brits have an accent, at the time not knowing that Americans are the ones with the accent.

If it is referring to the middle of something, such as the middle of a circle or in fact any shape, then the spelling is CENTER. An example is "I walked to the center of the circle". An example would be "I started my new job at the Australian Centre for International Relations" or another example would be "the music score was deposited at the University Music Centre". As for "meter" vs "metre" the spelling is also different depending on what it's referring to. If it's referring to distance it's "METRE" - example: "the metre sprint" or "the steel pipe was 20 centimetres long".

The United States spells it as "liter", everybody else I believe spells it as "litre". I hope this is of some help! I don't see any difference between the two forms except the spelling.

Center is commonly regarded as an American spelling, whereas in Britain, people tend to spell it as centre. This is similar to some words like meter and metre , color and colour , etc. The spelling centre is standard in UK English.

In Canada it is typical in proper names, e. Toronto Centre for the Arts, but "center" is also commonly used otherwise, e. Both spellings can be encountered even in the same text, e.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What's the difference between "center" and "centre"?

Ask Question. Asked 8 years ago. Active 3 years, 8 months ago. Reference the graphs below for the relative usage of these terms in both of these language communities. As you can see, Americans prefer center by a wide margin. The opposite holds true for British writers:.

Still, they clearly illustrate a widespread usage trend. You should choose centre for British audiences, and center for American audiences.