I hope everyone reading this is having a great summer! This slow season means it’s an excellent time to nerd out about some etymology. In this month’s Editor’s Note, let’s take a brief look at adviser vs. advisor, and why you will commonly see my edits revert to the -er spelling.
To clarify up front: There is no one “correct” spelling of this word. Some corners of the internet will tell you they mean slightly different things, which is not true, and they have historically been intermingled since coming into existence.
Both spellings have been in use in English since the 1500s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (did you know the Hesburgh Libraries provides free access to the OED for ND users?). One important thing to note between the two entries is that while adviser has a substantial list of definitions and examples going back to the 16th century, the advisor entry pretty much just points back to adviser. This is a thing dictionaries do when one spelling is just a variant of another, more popular spelling.
And adviser is certainly historically the more popular of the two. Looking at Google’s Ngram viewer, which shows the popularity of words in a corpus of English publications dating back to 1800, adviser is the clear winner.
But see at the end how in recent years advisor has overtaken adviser? The gap is even wider when looking only at American English (not shown). It’s probably even more pronounced in the past few years, since, sadly, Google stopped updating the Ngram corpus in 2019.
What’s the upshot?
Given that there’s not really a difference between these two spellings, this word is a great example of when a style guide needs to just pick a spelling and stick with it, for consistency if nothing else. And given the history of this word, the University Style Guide has come down on adviser. If current trends keep up, however, we may revisit our guidance on this in a few years.
Advisor is a popular spelling around campus, especially in job titles. So when writing someone’s full job title ahead of their name, keep the advisor spelling. In pretty much every other circumstance, you’ll want adviser.
Want to learn more? Check out Merriam-Webster’s view.
Pop quiz
Following University style, is alma mater ever capitalized?
In some situations but not others
May pop quiz winner
Congrats to Kelli Kalisik, program director for donor relations, the winner of the May pop quiz!
Which of these (inaugural, first annual) is grammatically correct? inaugural
Although “first annual” is commonly used, an event can’t correctly be labeled as annual until it has occurred more than once (until then, it’s just a standalone event). If you are promoting a new event that you intend to be an annual one, an easy workaround is to use the word “inaugural” instead of “first annual.”
See https://onmessage.nd.edu/policies-and-guidelines/university-style-guide/#term-first-annual.
Latest style guide updates
No updates to report this month!
Have a suggestion for the style guide? Please email me at collins.189@nd.edu.
Just for fun
