🇺🇲American Spelling

British spelling

MAL Rewrite favors (not favours) American spellings rather than British spellings.

If you are aware of two variants of a word but are unsure which one is preferred in American English, it may be helpful to use Google's Ngram Viewer. Make sure to select the correct corpus (American English 2019) from the dropdown!

Examples

CorrectIncorrect

color

colour

favorite

favourite

traveling

travelling

neighbor

neighbour

judgment

judgement

onward

onwards

toward

towards

gray

grey

Words of Japanese origin

Names of real Japanese places are almost always treated as English words rather than as Japanese words which are being romanized. As such, they do not follow the MAL romanization guidelines. This also applies to words of Japanese origin that are found in English dictionaries.

Examples

  • Correct: Tokyo, Budokan, Osaka, Noh, daimyo, dojo

  • Incorrect: Toukyou, Budoukan, Oosaka, Nou, daimyou, doujou

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