British English in the GRE?

[Platysaurus]

Hi all, I'm booked in to do my GRE October 11, study seems to be going pretty well but I've been wondering since I'm Australian whether the markers for the analytical section consider British English spelling to be ok or not - especially now that they have the e-rater system, I don't really want to put an extra u or an s instead of a z in somewhere only to have it picked up as a mistake. I actually emailed GRE about this and pretty much got a non-answer, they said content was more important than spelling and grammar, which is fine but (somewhat ironic for a response about the analytical section) doesn't really answer the question.

Anyone else know about this?

[ZacharyObama]

I would just probably avoid British spellings. Also: USA! USA! USA!

[ssk2]

FWIW, I used British English throughout my analytical writing and scored a 5.5. Don't worry about it.

[emmm]

I don't think accepted British spellings would be considered incorrect. People all over the world (you're proof!) take the GRE, so it is nothing new to them.

[TakeruK]

I really don't think they would deduct points for incorrect spellings of words like "colour" and so on. Unlike some other languages, there isn't a governing body that determines how English should be written and usually British/American spellings are equally valid. Spelling and grammar are not going to significantly affect your score, unless your spelling/grammar makes it hard to understand your arguments.

[Platysaurus]

That's true, I was more worried about the e-rater system than the actual person - it'd be very plausible that even if the human marker would accept me focussing instead of focusing the computer might not. But thanks for the replies, I guess I probably have more important things to worry about.

[ssk2]

Just make sure you're consistent - whatever you use in the end. This should be true of your application essays too.

Edited September 30, 2012 by ssk2