Random survey

[gnomi]

'cause I'm curious.

Gray or grey? Why?

Comments

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

I can never make up my mind.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Grey. I like it better. It's softer. "Gray" seems awfully harsh.

[queue.livejournal.com]

When it's for work and other official stuff, I'd probably use gray because I was taught in school that grey is British and gray is American.

However, grey just looks so much better to me.

I don't know if I actually use the word very much, though, so I'm not sure what I actually use in, say, a LiveJournal post.

[sdelmonte]

Gray, 'cause I'm an American, darnit! :)

[somehedgehog.livejournal.com]

Depends on the flavor of gray. "Gray" strikes me (personally) as standard American English for the neutral color between black and white. "Grey," on the other hand, has a more British and/or old-fashioned tone to it, making it more suitable to poetic or intentionally archaic uses of the word

Examples:
This car is gunmetal gray.
My dog looks like a gray dustbunny.

vs.

In the wretched grey depths of grey melancholy, yea, in the dank dark depths of my danky doom do the grey storm clouds gather greyly.

(I stopped writing poetry at 15. Can you tell?)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Personally -- although I know of no linguistic or technical grounds for this whatsoever -- I think of gray as denoting a warm gray (with more yellow in it) and grey as a cool grey (with more blue in it). I always have. I don't know where I picked that idea up.

My impression is that both are considered standard, but that there is a preference in the US for gray and in the UK for grey (e.g., "Gandalf Greyhame"). My other impression is that gray is more industry standard (in publishing/printing, e.g., "grayscale"), but that may just be true in my experience because it is more an American usage. In practice, I'm not even sure whether there's one spelling I use instinctively, or if they feel completely interchangeable to me. Huh.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm also in the "it depends" group. 'Grey' is a bit softer, a bit fuzzier, while 'gray' is neutral or flat.
I suspect I'd answer differently had I not read a ton of British kid books when young, however.

[cheshyre]

I tend to use "grey" but I couldn't say why.
I have heard that "gray" is American and "grey" is British/European. When I'm conducting searches or queries, "gray" turns up more results than "grey" so I suspect that's the more common spelling.

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

I find grey to be classier, so I tend to use it. But I think that's just anglophilia.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Grey. Because it reminds me of Yeats. Though I'm not consistant. Someone above said "gunmetal gray" and that looks right to me, as does "blue and gray" re: the Civil War, but fog is grey and so are eyes.

Mer

[half-double.livejournal.com]

Alas, I got the 'grey' bullied out of me. I used to use that spelling all the time. And then I had an English teacher who was downright cruel in his denunciation of it: "You're an American. Spell like one." Out of fear for my grade, I reverted to the much more pedestrian 'gray.'

Ah...another butterfly of childhood creativity brutally squished by the American public educational system.

[tinnean.livejournal.com]

Grey.

I read too much Georgette Heyer in my misspent youth?

Whichever spell check I ran it through said it was okay?

Um... actually, just because. :-)

[gem225.livejournal.com]

Gray, because that's how I learned to spell it when I was a little voracious reader terrorizing my local library by taking out more books than they thought any little girl could read in one week (and proving them wrong every time, not to your surprise, I'm sure), and even though I know that grey is a perfectly acceptable variant, it always seems wrong to me. *g*

Icon by celli. Isn't it cute?

[tinnean.livejournal.com]

It's Benson!

Love it! Celli did a good job. :-)

[gem225.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, since he's the actor who played Benson, but it's actually Isaac from Sports Night. *g* I'm so glad that you love it. Now maybe you'll watch the Sports Night tape I sent you, and there are more where that came from. 0:-)

[dpolicar]

you know, it's like asking a centipede how it walks.
I think I use "gray". No good reason.

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Grey. I'm pretty sure I always use that, but maybe I don't. I like it better, anyway...

farwing, who can't spell very well anyway, so should probably not have opinions on spelling, but...

Just for today

[rexstout.livejournal.com]

Gray, in honor of Spalding Gray, whose body was just found.Otherise grey, but sometimes gray.

I take it back

[rexstout.livejournal.com]

You know me. I see the world in black and white.