American and British English Spelling Differences - Dropped E

Dropped E

British English sometimes keeps silent e when adding suffixes where American English does not. Generally speaking, British English drops it in only some cases in which it is needed to show pronunciation whereas American English only uses it where needed.

• British prefers ageing, American usually aging (compare raging, ageism). For the noun or verb "route", British English often uses routeing, but in America routing is used. The military term rout forms routing everywhere. However, all of these words form "router", whether used in the context of carpentry, data communications, or military. (e.g. "Attacus was the router of the Huns at ....")

Both forms of English keep the silent e in the words dyeing, singeing, and swingeing (in the sense of dye, singe, and swinge), to distinguish from dying, singing, swinging (in the sense of die, sing, and swing). In contrast, the verb bathe and the British verb bath both form bathing. Both forms of English vary for tinge and twinge; both prefer cringing, hinging, lunging, syringing.

• Before -able, British English prefers likeable, liveable, rateable, saleable, sizeable, unshakeable, where American practice prefers to drop the -e; but both British and American English prefer breathable, curable, datable, lovable, movable, notable, provable, quotable, scalable, solvable, usable, and those where the root is polysyllabic, like believable or decidable. Both systems keep the silent e when it is needed to preserve a soft c, ch, or g, such as in traceable, cacheable, changeable; both usually keep the "e" after -dge, as in knowledgeable, unbridgeable, and unabridgeable ("These rights are unabridgeable").
• Both abridgment and the more regular abridgement are current in the US, only the latter in the UK. Likewise for the word lodg(e)ment. Both judgment and judgement are in use interchangeably everywhere, although the former prevails in the US and the latter prevails in the UK except in the practice of law, where judgment is standard. This also holds for abridgment and acknowledgment. Both systems prefer fledgling to fledgeling, but ridgeling to ridgling. Both acknowledgment, acknowledgement, abridgment and abridgement are used in Australia; the shorter forms are endorsed by Australian governments.
• The word "blue" always drops the "e" when forming "bluish" or "bluing".