Which is correct, gray or grey?

"Grey is used primarily in areas that use UK English. Gray is used primarily in areas that use US English." ––– (Kim Siever)

That's right. I'm in Australia and doing a Master's degree in Writing at University (College) and we discussed this in class the other day, because a student wrote gray in a short story and was told to change it to grey.

Similarly, if you are in the States you will be encouraged to use gray.

There are many other differences too. For example, we write travelled, in the US it has only one 'l', there's centre and center, theatre and theater etc, colour and color, labour and labor, defence/defense, jewellery and jewelry, kerb and curb, litre/liter/metre/meter, tyre and tire and so on.

The American spelling's often a little more phonetic.

Grey! In the UK Gray is also a name :o)

Grey is used primarily in areas that use UK English. Gray is used primarily in areas that use US English.

Depends on if you are in U.S. or U.K.

Gray because my spell checker says Grey is correct too.
It doesn't matter in my opinion.
Of course Lord Earl is Grey

None at all: Grey is the standard British English spelling and Gray is the standard American English spelling. The pronunciation and meaning are the same.

Both are acceptable in the USA, but 'gray' is the official spelling.

I like grey better, but either is correct.

I'm from the USA.

Of course both gray and grey are correct. Even though this answer box just flagged grey as incorrect! lol. But as the others have pointed out, gray is more generally used in the US and grey in the UK.

It is generally more respectable to use one or the other consistently, although some of us are quite visual and regularly spell words the latest way we have been reading them.

The one place you must not make a mistake is in proper nouns: Earl Grey cannot be spelled Gray, nor Zane Grey, either. And L.H. Gray must be spelled Gray.

Also be careful of the compound word greyhound, which is spelled grey-.

I spell it with an E, but then I put what somebody on this site told me was a spurious U in colour and humour.

Gray....as in my hair if I didn't color it every once in a while.

There's no difference. The two different spellings are correct for the same color.

It appears that the "gray" varient appeared later, as an American English varient of "grey". Both have mostly the same many meanings. So yes, "grey" is a color, and was always so. Us Americans had to go
and be different with "gray."
A few meanings are unique, however, to the "gray" varient.

i spell it as grey.

Depends where you live, I write grey and humour and colour. Those who live south of me would say that is incorrect ;-)

grey!!

katscratcedme6 wrote on Dec 7, 2004 at 5:34 pm

"The American spelling's often a little more phonetic."

The above claim is false.

Spelling can never be phoentic. Letters are symbols that represent bits of sound.

Spelling can be consistent or inconsistent, yet not "more phonetic".

Colour Grey

i say grey.

It depends where you live. In Scotland both spellings occur, though as an English speaker and writer of English I prefer _grey_. I can't see that there's much point in getting upset about it. _Gray_ is a common surname in England and Scotland.

Depends. In the US Gray is correct. but in other English speaking countries it is spelled Grey. Funny, I was just answering a "what color" question... my answer was grey till spell check told me I was wrong :-)

I think both are technically correct.

I use grey.

gray

Depends on where you are.

I tend to throw people for a loop because I use grey, though I tend to spell most other words the American way.

"Grey" appears to be a legitimate modern American alternate spelling of "gray." There may be regional or historical preferences but Merriam-Webster just lists grey as a variant of gray. On a spelling test, I would mark it wrong if the student used the spelling not on the spelling list that was provided, but I don't think I would take off points for using either in a composition provided the student was consistent - I don't think I would let a student get away using both spellings in the same writing.

I would personally encourage using "gray" since that is the way I learned it and that is the main entry in my dictionary.