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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Ironically enough, they also spelt the title wrong too.

I guess this is one of those en-US-vs-the-rest-of-the-english-speaking-world weirdnesses? I've never seen/heard "spelled" before in my native-English-speaking life as far I can remember.

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British is spelt. US is spelled. [1] [2]

1 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spell

2 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spelt

The CBC should be using British spelling!!

Canadian spelling is a hybrid of British and American. For example, centre not center, but aluminum not aluminum.

For this particular word (spelled/spelt), British spelling allows both forms interchangeably, with spelled mildly preferred in Canada but both may be found:

https://grammarist.com/spelling/spelled-spelt/

> aluminum not aluminum

Looks like you mean "aluminum not aluminium"?

Hah, yes. Thanks for the important correction!

I wonder if there's an east/west variation on usage in Canada. Out west here I've only seen spelled (and other similar words with ed rather than t) used. I suspect the closer to the maritime provinces you get, the more British influence on the usage.

Perhaps they used the American spelling because they’re quoting an American?

Americans almost never use "spelt", but in British English, "spelled" and "spelt" are both considered correct.

On the contrary, that’s the name of the grain, so that’s what I use. :-)

Plenty of these:

speeded vs sped / spilled vs spilt / learned vs learnt

https://www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/irregularverbs.ht...

Not sure if its a purely US vs common wealth thing, there seems to be plenty of variation within the populations of both.

I always used speeded for the past tense of "speeding" as in breaking the speed limit and sped as the past tense of "speeding" as in the phrase "speeding past". Similar to hang/hung/hanged where hung is the past tense of hang unless in the context of hanging the form of execution, whose past tense is hanged. I wonder if there's a name for this phenomenon.

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