Monday, July 30, 2007

center vs centre

I came to know just now that there is absolutely no difference in meaning between the words center and centre. Not only did I get surpized when I discovered this fact, I also felt ashamed at having used both of them so far at different places with slightly different meanings on numerous occasions, and at having considered myself one heck of a linguist for such excuisite skill at using the right words at the right places. I had been thinking that center is the geometric mid-point of a circle; and centre is used to refer to locations where a specific activity takes place. Actually it's the same word for both of these meanings. The British spell it as centre and the Americans spell it as center. So it is good to stick to one of the two spellings (think which English is yours closer to - the British or the American!). "The difference between center and centre" has been asked a lot of times in various fora on the internet. Most answers state that there is no difference except for the way the Americans and the Britishers spell the same word. But I found one answer at Yahoo! Answers particularly interesting (thoughful and thought-provoking). It says: "This has to do with the two poles of the universe. Britain is the 'centre' of the universe, while America is the 'center' of the universe." (Did you know - when there's a quotation mark in the end of a sentence, the Americans put the full-stop before the quotation mark, and the Britishers put the full-stop after it! Check out: Wikipedia Full Stop) Also, check this out for a list of many English words spelt and used differently by the Americans and the Britishers. I hope there will come a time when another form of Enlgish - the Indian English - will also be recognized as one of the standard versions of the language. Till then, let's work on creating it!

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