Grey vs Gray

[The Judge]

 

[TheDustyZebra]

It comes from the French eau pas -- "not water". This was originally the name for all aquatic creatures -- people didn't bother separating out the types of fish, they were only interested in distinguishing them from the sea itself. But while all the other fish got their own names eventually, with the opah the original stuck.

I'm glad that's all sorted out. I was busy trying to figure out what the heck sort of color "opah" was. I thought it was something you say at Greek weddings.

 

[WaylanderToo]

mind you if you take "Opah" to Germany it becomes Opa - which is granddad

 

[Wiglaf]

Use whatever you like as long as it's correct and you're consistent. My publishers are American so my greys got changed to grays whether I liked it or not. You can argue with editors, by the way. Sometimes you'll win. (I got to keep 'jumper' instead of 'sweater,' and an interrobang, but I wasn't allowed to keep B&B no matter how good my reasoning and it was all changed to B and B which looks - and sounds - weird to me).

Did you ever get any reasons? Grey is an acceptable alternative to gray in American English, but jumper and sweater mean entirely different things in American. From some of your comments, I've long thought your American editors are weird.

 

[Danny McG]

The Bob Shaw short story "Gray Man" comes to mind. I was searching for it as Grey Man but Google wouldn't help

 

[Brian G Turner]

Grey is an acceptable alternative to gray in American English

I just wanted to ask how common this is? I know we have a lot of American readers who are familiar and even comfortable with British English spellings. But does the use of "grey" really scream out "unAmerican"?

 

[Cat's Cradle]

edit to add this was in response to @Brian G Turner 's question.

Just my impressions, from reading in the U.S. for 45+ years...gray was the spelling I was taught to use in school in the 1960s (and was the form most commonly used in contemporary American-version-of-English literature I read growing up). I would have thought, in my formative years, that 'grey' was very British (I may even have been told this by teachers), and was a more formal spelling, and was perhaps to be found most often - in books I'd have access to then, in the States - in Fantasy stories (I just checked, and of course 'grey' is used exclusively in the Tolkien Middle Earth tales, never 'gray' [at least in the three books I searched]). I just checked an old U.S. SF book, and gray was the preferred spelling.

I would have assumed that 'grey' might have been more commonly used in U.S. publications before 1900 (I searched my volume of Poe, though, and found 36 uses of gray, but also 9 uses of grey...curious as to why he'd use both; an editor's choice, or could he have been trying for a different feel in the stories that used grey?).

And the Chrons spell-check certainly favors grey over gray (which I am told is misspelled). (It is also not very fond of 'favor', preferring 'favour'.) Well, those are the thoughts of one person who grew up in the States, on the East Coast, in the 60s and 70s.

 

[tinkerdan]

I have to agree that it's more what we are taught in the US, than anything else.
I find myself trying to use grey more often with sticking to Gray for names that I want to stand out.

Also--as an aside--I believe our crayola crayons used gray on all of the grey crayons. (That's teaching us from infancy.)

 

[Danny McG]

If you consider 'Dreamcatcher' by Stephen King then Grey wouldn't have worked.
Gary was taken over and the alien became Mr Gray, an anagram of his name.
If it was UK spelling it would have been Mr Grey so the protagonist would have been called Gery.
That's not a name, it sounds like a medical condition - " He has a high fever and a severe infestation of Gery"

 

[Danny McG]

Something dragged up in memory banks from way way back. English teacher telling me the colour 'Grey' applies to people i.e. hair or eyes colour. The colour 'Gray' applies to horses.
Anybody else get taught this?

 

[tinkerdan]

Gery is short of Geraldine sometimes, in fact, my x mother inlaw was affectionately known a such. So you'd really just have to change the sex of the character and it would have to be Ms. Grey.

 

[NJ Merchant]

I use gray and I'm American, but grey doesn't bother me too much as an editor. I do change it to gray if it's an American novel I am editing and grey if it's UK since I do both. It's more consistency that is the issue. If you use gray, then use gray throughout your manuscript. Same goes for grey. Don't change it up and use both. That just gets confusing. The only time I think this would be acceptable is if you are using one (grey) for a color and the other (gray) as a name.

 

[Guillermo Stitch]

It's interesting to see that there are Americans who prefer "Grey". I has always just assumed that one spelling was automatically used in American English and the other in British.

On a more general point, I don't think anybody should get too exercised on the issue of American vs British. It isn't something that in quantifiable way matters, at all.

The book I'm trying to shill at the moment is a noir, and the setting, as in most classic noir, is Los Angeles (kind of - it's a Los Angeles avatar at any rate). I'm Irish and therefore educated into British spelling, but why on earth would I use it in such a book? I made the choice to use American as a matter of style. Why not?

 

[AstroZon]

My English teachers of yore used to gig me for using grey instead of gray - even in college (pre-computer days.)

Come to think of it, I only had one decent college English teacher. The rest were all disgruntled writers.

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Funnily enough, the actual shades of color I imagine when I see "gray" versus "grey" are different. To me, gray is a lighter, more consistent color than grey. Grey is slightly darker, more chalky and irregular.

I don't know why.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

It comes from the French eau pas -- "not water". This was originally the name for all aquatic creatures -- people didn't bother separating out the types of fish, they were only interested in distinguishing them from the sea itself. But while all the other fish got their own names eventually, with the opah the original stuck.

I'm pretty sure that's not right. sounds more like a fanciful etymology. In French "eau pas" would mean "water not," but just the words -- that is totally not an idiomatic or grammatically correct phrase. If anything, you would say "pas de l'eau."

According to Wiktionary, it comes from "uba" in the Igbo language: opah - Wiktionary

 

[HareBrain]

I'm pretty sure that's not right.

Well, no, it's a complete lie that I made up in an attempt to be funny. But in a way, isn't that a kind of truth?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Well, in that case, it IS funny.