Spelling!!

This is why I could never win a spelling bee! I've long known that I learned most of my grammar and spelling from reading (and my mom), but this is apparently what happens when you grow up reading British books. Okay, so it started with my spell checker constantly stopping me from writing "arguement". It kept saying the proper word was "argument", which looked completely wrong to me. It also complains about "judgement" and "develope". Finally, having grown sick of this, I googled it, and found out that most of my spelling "errors" are actually British spellings of the words.

Problem: I spell by what looks right to me, and I've been using these spellings since I was very little, so they're what come naturally. Sigh. Oh well, I like having a little Brit English mixed in with my stories, and if I ever get published I'm sure they'll just slaughter and Americanize them at that point anyway. I forced my spellchecker to accept them all though, mwa ha ha ha to that.

So anyway, here's my list of words I apparently spell "wrong".

arguement
judgement
develope (still can't quite find a conclusive source on whether this is a British spelling or just a misspelling)(edit: apparently, it's just me being random and misspelling it)
dialogue (the American spelling for me is more slang, like "Let's sit and have a dialog, shall we?")
catalogue
dreampt
leapt
learnt
dwelt (etc, all of these look wrong to me with the "ed" on the end instead of the "t")
knitted
etc.

It's even gone so far that with some, like dialogue above, the British and American spellings have different connotations. e.g. I would use "color" to describe blue or green, but "colour" for physical changes. ("That's my favorite color" vs "Her face coloured with embarrassment")

Grey and gray are different for me as well, grey being more yellow, and gray being more blue.

And I know that lots of people use center and centre, as well as theater and theatre as words with almost different meanings, the latter, British spelling often connoting something of more sophistication.

Anyway, there are some others I jump back and forth with, but mostly I seem to be an American girl with British tendencies. Hmm, that sounds almost like I just said I was bisexual when it comes to literature. :)