Stars and Stripes vs the Union Jack Quiz

Answer: colour

US English spelling tends to drop silent vowels, and this is a good example. Both "color" and "colour" are accepted spellings of the word in FunTrivia quizzes. Other words that follow the same pattern include (US spelling first) favor/favour, humor/humour, labor/labour, neighbor/neighbour, mold/mould and favorite/favourite.

Answer: They are all spelled correctly.

Of the words used in the question, "haemoglobin" and "encyclopaedia" are spelled according to UK convention, while "pediatrician" is spelled according to US convention - both are accepted in FunTrivia quizzes. This situation is another case of US English spelling dropping a silent vowel, which is the "a" in this case.

This kind of difference shows up most often in science quizzes, which can feature a number of words spelled according to the UK convention. Examples of word pairings that fall into this category are (US spelling first) hemoglobin/haemoglobin, gynecology/gynaecology, pediatrician/paediatrician, anemia/anaemia, hemophilia/haemophilia and encyclopedia/encyclopaedia.

Answer: Yes

Many UK English words that end in "re" are spelled to end with "er" in US English. Both forms of spelling are accepted in FunTrivia quizzes. Other examples of this type of difference include the word pairings (US spelling first) center/centre and meter/metre (this last example is when referring to the unit of length; "meter" is also used in UK English to refer to objects like parking meters).

Answer: grey

The UK English spelling of the colour "grey" contains an "e" rather than an "a". However, this can be a tricky one, as the word is used as both a first and last name and either spelling may be used. An example of this is the television show "Grey's Anatomy", about a doctor named Meredith Grey.

The show's title is a play on the well-known anatomy book best known as "Gray's Anatomy", by Henry Gray, first published in the mid-19th century.

Answer: oestrogen

Once again, this is a case of the US English spelling dropping a silent vowel. Other examples of this include the word pairings (US spelling first) fetid/foetid, diarrhea/diarrhoea and enology/oenology.

Answer: A cheque.

Quite a few words spelled with an internal "qu" in UK English have the "qu" replaced with a "k" or "ck" in the US English spelling. Other word pairings (US spelling first) demonstrating this difference include (tennis) racket/racquet and checkered/chequered.

The word "cheque" is derived from "exchequer" (an old English word for a bill); "cheque" was used to describe the counterfoil of the bill, present in order to guard against forgery.

Answer: aluminium

Aluminum/aluminium is one of those interesting special cases with regard to its different US and UK spellings. "Alumium" was the name first proposed for the element (based on the Latin word "alumen"), but people felt this was hard to say and so it was gradually replaced with "aluminum".

However, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists adopted the name "aluminium" for the element so that it matched the "ium" ending of most of the other chemical elements. Both the US English spelling of "aluminum" the UK spelling of "aluminium" are accepted in FunTrivia quizzes.

Answer: catalogue

This is another one of those cases where the US English spelling has dropped the silent vowels. Other examples of this include the word pairings (US spelling first) analog/analogue and dialog/dialogue.

Answer: programme

In UK English, "programme" can refer to not only a television show, but also to the printed brochure you can buy when at a theatrical production. This is another tricky case, though, as the alternative spelling of "program" has found its way into UK English when referring to computer software.

Answer: True

The book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", by J.K. Rowling, was published under this title in the UK and many other countries. However, in the USA and some other countries, it was published as "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". Both titles are accepted in FunTrivia quizzes, as both are correct for the countries in which they were released. The same convention applies to the title of the first movie in the "Harry Potter" series.

Something else to keep in mind is that it's not just people who live or were brought up in the UK who will use UK English spelling; many British Commonwealth countries (such as Australia and Canada, for example) may use any or all of the UK English spelling conventions mentioned in this quiz. I hope you had fun with the quiz and maybe learned something you didn't know before starting it. Thanks to my fellow FunTrivia editors for their input on this subject.