{"id":5279,"date":"2013-04-11T19:30:54","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T23:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5279"},"modified":"2013-04-11T19:30:54","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T23:30:54","slug":"into-the-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5279","title":{"rendered":"Into the "Grey""},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Lileks.com<\/a>,<\/strong> my close personal friend* James Lileks was complaining about paint today. He\u2019s repainting his office, and can\u2019t seem to get the color he wants, once it actually dries. I have no comment on that subject. I moved into a pink office in the library several years ago, and have just lived with it because getting it repainted would be a lot of work.<\/p>\n

What caught my attention was that, by my count, he used the word \u201cgray\u201d twice, but he spelled it \u201cgrey\u201d both times.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen this spelling come up more and more frequently lately, and it amuses me. All my life (which is another way of saying \u201cfrom time immemorial\u201d) I was taught that \u201cgray\u201d is the American spelling and \u201cgrey\u201d is how the English do it. But \u201cgrey\u201d seems to be winning out now. I suppose that\u2019s because of the Fifty Shades of Grey<\/i> books.<\/p>\n

This may surprise you, but I\u2019m not actually unhappy about this development. I\u2019ve always thought spelling \u201cgrey\u201d with an \u201ce\u201d was kind of cool. There\u2019s something a tad bleaker, colder about that spelling. Grayer, you might say. Or greyer.<\/p>\n

I remember reading an interview, probably in Writer\u2019s Digest, with Colleen McCullough quite a few years ago. She was the author of The Thorn Birds<\/i>, which was a big deal at the time. She mentioned that she always spelled gray with an \u201ca,\u201d except when describing people\u2019s eyes. Gray eyes, she felt, should be spelled with an \u201ce.\u201d<\/p>\n

I sympathized, though I\u2019ve always used the \u201ca\u201d spelling myself. I have enough affectations already, without adopting English spellings.<\/p>\n

But maybe \u201cgrey\u201d will win.<\/p>\n

I can live with it, in my grey old age.<\/p>\n

*Editor\u2019s Note: This is a lie.
\n
<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Lileks.com, my close personal friend* James Lileks was complaining about paint today. He\u2019s repainting his office, and can\u2019t seem to get the color he wants, once it actually dries. I have no comment on that subject. I moved into a pink office in the library several years ago, and have just lived with … Continue reading Into the "Grey"<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}