Oxford spelling

"Oxford style" redirects here. For the Oxford or Harvard comma, see Serial comma.

Oxford spelling (also Oxford English Dictionary spelling, Oxford style, or Oxford English spelling) is a spelling standard, named after its use by the Oxford University Press, that prescribes the use of British spelling in combination with the suffix -ize in words like realize and organization instead of -ise endings.

Oxford spelling is used by many UK-based academic journals (for example, Nature) and many international organizations (for example, the United Nations and its agencies).[1][2][3] It is common for academic, formal, and technical writing for an international readership. In digital documents, Oxford spelling may be indicated by the IETF language tag en-GB-oxendict (or historically by en-GB-oed).[4]

  1. ^ Cantrill, Stuart (25 April 2013). "50 Things You Might Not Know About Nature Chemistry". The Sceptical Chymist. Retrieved 5 May 2016. [W]e use Oxford English spelling. So, for all of you wondering why we put 'z's in lots of words that you don't think we should, hopefully that answers your question.
  2. ^ "United Nations Editorial Manual: Spelling". Department for General Assembly and Conference Management. Archived from the original on 30 October 2023.
  3. ^ Three further examples:
    1.  Style Manual (2nd Revised ed.). UNESCO. 2004.
    2.  Hindle, W. H. (1984). Theron, Johan; Malania, Leo (eds.). A Guide to Writing for the United Nations (2nd ed.). UN Department of Conference Services.
    3. "Words ending in -ize, -ise and -yse". WHO Style Guide. Geneva: World Health Organization. 2004. pp. 77–78. Where there is a choice between using the suffix -ize or -ise (e.g. organize or organise), -ize, derived from the Greek ‑izo, is preferred, consistent with the first spelling of such words given in The concise Oxford dictionary [sic].
    All use British -our spellings with Oxford -ize/-ization, except in proper names that have Organisation.
  4. ^ IANA language subtag registry, IANA, with "en-GB-oed" added 9 July 2003 marked as grandfathered, and deprecated effective 17 April 2015, with "en-GB-oxendict" preferred (accessed 8 August 2015).