{canadian.spelling} It's Brit

Learning the correct spelling of words in English has caused me few problems in the past. I used to like the American laziness and omitted the "u" from the "ou" words such as colour. Now, I am quite the opposite. I like to write them the British way. It's a matter of taste and it changes over time.

Now, I like to write "colour" not "color"; "behaviour" not "behavior"; and "neighbour" not "neighbor".

It's more eye-pleasing the "ou" way (to me at least)!

When I was sending an email to my supervisor the other day, I felt something is wrong in my spelling of words. I was asking something about my defence session. It just came out of the monitor when I was proof-reading my email. How on earth could I have made such a mistake? It's defense not defence! Wait. Not exactly! Defence looks not too strange though!

I couldn't decide the correct spelling and I wanted to find the answer through Google. I told myself, "Let's try a few words before Googling everything."

We say fencing, right? It's with "c", so how could I have written it all wrong before as defense? Ha Ha Ha, what a stupid I have been before.

No! Looking at defense I again saw no problems. If there were anything wrong with the spelling, it would have popped out of the monitor natourally, just like "natourally" popping out of your monitor now! But, defense stayed there. At that moment, I convinced myself that defense was correct.

What about defence then? I tried offence, and then offencive to see if they look familiar. Offencive really looks piculiar, right? It's gotta be offensive not offencive, therefore, offence is a wrong spelling.

At that moment, I confused myself, and I think I am confusing you now as well. So, here is what I deducted after surfing some websites:

Defence and offence are the correct British English spellings.
Defense and offense are the correct American English spellings.
Defensive and offensive are the correct spelling in both! I even checked Oxford dictionary to make sure that defencive and offencive should not be used at all. However, Google still returns 74,200 websites that wrongly use offencive. A common mistake I would say.