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The suggestions it gave were "realise" and "analyse", so I went to the COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English), and it turned out that what I've spelled was most commonly spelled, and what FF suggested, well, I might just say they were the rare cases. Why is that?

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Wow... getting a migration from English.SE must be a first. I remember when we migrated a question TO English.SE once upon a time. – nhinkle♦ Mar 31 '11 at 21:23
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@nhinkle: We've been interested in your site for a long time. This is just a trial run, a probe. If it works out for us — if your atmosphere is breathable, etc. — you may expect the death ships to arrive before long. – Robusto Apr 1 '11 at 17:07

migrated from english.stackexchange.com Mar 31 '11 at 20:37

2 Answers

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Firefox is suggesting British spellings to you. Is your browser set to use en-GB for some reason? (Or en-CA, or anything other than en-US.)

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Yes, It's en-AU actually, thanks. – trVoldemort Mar 31 '11 at 13:06
I know this doesn't belong to the English.SE, but since since this is related: to change the language being used by Firefox's spell checker, right click within any text field, and under languages choose the one you want. If it's not listed, new dictionaries can be added by clicking the 'Add Dictionary' link. – Ankur Banerjee Mar 31 '11 at 18:12
@trVoldemort - Australian English uses "proper" ;) English spellings. – ChrisF Mar 31 '11 at 20:41
up vote 2 down vote

Realize and Analyze are the American versions of the British Realise and Analyse. The word 'analyse' has its roots from the word 'analysis', and I think the usage 'analyse' is more etymologically correct. Some editors may not recognize (recognise) the variants, no need to worry :)

For more info, check this link.

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American English spelling is often closer to Spanish (which has realizar and analizar) while British English is closer to French (réaliser and analyser), and also with Webster's improvements such as color. – Henry Mar 31 '11 at 16:20

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