Gray is a color, while grey is a colour.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
89 points (95.9% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48630 readers
919 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
grey - 🇬🇧 english (traditional)
gray - 🇺🇸 english (simplified)
This is correct, but for some reason in my head I think of gray as warm toned (like with yellow or brown undertones) and grey as cool toned (like with blue or purple undertones).
I have no idea why my brain has decided this is the way.
What?! It's exactly the opposite, obviously!
load more comments
(1 replies)
gray - 🇺🇸 english (simplified)
grey - 🇬🇧 english (traditional)
gr*y - 🇦🇺 english (explicit)
I'm splitting hairs but I always read
grey - 🇨🇦 english (eh)
load more comments
(5 replies)
E is the European version, A is the American version. This sounds trite, but is true, and makes it simple to know which one to use
. . . Unless you’re in the majority of the English speaking world, which includes India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Of course, grey is the appropriate spelling for all of those but Canada, which uses both.
Canada, which uses both
græy /s
Canadas english is weird
Especially when it comes to measurements (weight, volume, mass, temperature)
What’s wrong with Canada’s weights and measures?
Everything is in SI units.
Unless you’re cooking, where heat is in Fahrenheit, solid measures are in cups teaspoons and tablespoons (but liquids are in litres and weights are in grams).
Or in construction, where you work in feet and yards. Or measuring a person’s height.
But while someone might be 6’ tall, their stride length will be in metres, as will their arm span.
So yeah; simple. It’s not like Canada has tons of people weighing in tonnes.
A "Pint" of beer served commercially in Canada must be 20 imperial (UK) ounces (aka ~568 mL), with a 2.5% margin of error permitted within the law, unlike a US pint (16 US fl oz ~473mL).
Just for fun, "Une pinte" of alcohol in French served commercially is "a quart" of alcohol in English which is double that value.
load more comments
(4 replies)
No need to downvote this comment
Even canadians agree that we have a weird mix of different systems in play
load more comments
(1 replies)
Australia uses both, but grey is "correct".
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
It is spelled grey in correct English. In the USA, they like spelling it gray.
No we don't. Grey is the only way.
load more comments
(8 replies)
I think it's a USA vs European English thing.
I prefer the 'grey' spelling though, even though 'gray' is most common in the states.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I know it's an American vs other English speaking countries thing, but as an American I can honestly never remember which one we are. I always used to look it up, but now I just shoot from the hip and assume I'm right, which feels the most American way to approach it.
I think that’s what most Americans do. I don’t think I’ve thought about how to spell it in decades. I just spell it both ways depending on the day.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's græy
In all the languages that have the letter æ , exactly none of them use it for that colour.
Yes
I know that this is “no stupid questions” but it boggles the mind that people post in forums when the answer is either yes/no, or a single sentence explanation available in a web search.
we should just not have Lemmy at all and only read news articles, wikipedia and talk to ourselves
I’m glad you asked. This is something I never realized how often I have brief flashes of curiosity about before I yolo it and never bothered looking up. As soon as I saw the title I was looking forward to reading what people had to say.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Gray in the US. Grey elsewhere.
Yes
It's pronounced gay ya twats
Either way is correct.
view more: next ›