grey vs gray

Mid-post of what was originally going to be my second official blog post, I came across the word gray. Then I thought, grey or gray? It’s something I’ve wondered most of my life, but never at a time that seemed convenient to look into it further. It’s my favorite color, all 50 shades and more of it. (That joke seems to pop up a lot when I say that grey/gray is my favorite color.)

So I thought that tonight would be a great opportunity to finally look into a question that has been burning my grey/gray-loving, “I’m a writer I should know this one” soul. How the hell is gray/grey spelt? To answer my question, I turned to the ever-available Google. “Grey vs gray” is typed into the search bar, and no I wasn’t Feeling Lucky, so my page reloads to show the first handful out of what Google said was around 112,000,000 results for my search.

My first choice is to visit greyorgray.com. It gets my inner struggle. Apparently, according to the site, the pair of fraternal word twins are interchangeable, however “gray” is more commonly used in America and “grey” in England. A noticeable difference the site points out is the actual hex codes for each color. Grey is a lighter shade, while gray is much darker. Cloford.com provides a long, long list of over 500 colors and includes a swatch of the color, its name and hex code. As you can see below, Cloford calls all but one of the hues gray. The one lonely grey is a much lighter shade.

It’s 100 percent cliche to reference Merriam-Webster when defining something in longer-form, whether it’s during a graduation speech or on a blog post like this one. But I also feel like it’s necessary. Sorry. MW defines gray as “of the color gray,” “tending toward gray [as in blue-gray eyes],” and “dull in color.” Okay, those make sense, seem reasonable. When MW defines grey, it references multiple names of people and that it’s a “variant of gray.” That, in a way, explains why Fifty Shades of Grey uses “Grey” and not “Gray.” I’m not sure why I’ve already referenced this book twice already...I’ve never even read it and I don’t plan to pay a $12 to see it in theaters. $12 is a lot these days, I could buy a whole pizza with that kind of money. I digress, for neither the first nor last time on this blog.

I’m confident in saying that after looking at these few sources, I can comfortably settle on using “gray” over “grey.” Unless I move to the UK, I’ll stick to this notion and not feel self conscious and unsure next time I have to write the name of the hue down on paper.

I’m thinking that this blog may become a compilation of posts like this one. Thinks that I wonder about in the everyday, but never think to spend time looking into it. I’m hoping this will make me generally more inquisitive. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.