My spelling has never been great, but then the English language doesn’t always have consistent rules either. As I continue to write about black and white photography, I have to reference the color gray (grey?). The questions is: how should I spell it?

The researcher in me took over and I decided to consult Webster. As it turns out, both spellings are acceptable and both spellings mean the same thing – the color. However, the roots come from different places.

Gray is American English. Grey is British English. I haven’t yet found a source that tells me when it changed from an ‘e’ to an ‘a’, but I surmise it had something to do with wanting to be different from the Mother Country back when we decided to be independent.

As far as my blogs go, I will use either spelling, but I lean towards using the British spelling. I make no promises that I will be consistent, but at least now we know where the variations came from!