The Writer's Life: Monday Morning Trivia - What's in a Word? Ageing or Aging?

 

Ageing or ageing — that is the question.

Grammar — does it matter? 

When writing about the subject of ageing the grammar checker underlines the word, giving the alternative spelling — aging.

It says that I may have made a mistake.

But it turns out that the only mistake I have made is that the grammar checker has reset itself to American English. It has a habit of doing that from time to time.

But it reminds me that when I write the word ‘ageing’, it is British English. 

But I was not writing specifically for a British audience, so what to do? Ageing and aging are spelling variants of the same word. It is not a spelling mistake, but it might be seen that way depending on the audience. I’m English, so I tend to write using words that are British English, and therefore I would spell ‘ageing’ with an e. 

I’m of a certain age where I can probably claim to be an expert on the subject of ageing. After all, I’m now old enough to qualify as an expert.

Goodness, I will soon qualify for a pension.

And ageing is a subject that I can write about as I get older and closer to official retirement. There is much that I want to write about on surviving retirement, and I have thought about setting up another blog just for that. It seems to be quite a popular subject to write about.

With all that in my mind, here I am on a Monday morning, dabbling in the trivia of whether I should stay faithful to using the word ‘ageing’ when most are searching for the word ‘aging’ without the e. I’m writing for everyone, but the search algorithm doesn’t care about that.

What a dilemma.

So, does it matter?

Should I remain true to where I am from and stick with ageing?

Or just be sneaky and use both.

Other than upsetting the grammar checker, does it matter?