

Ask HN: "advisor" or "adviser" - MrMike

Which do you prefer? Do you consider one version wrong?<p>Is it a geographic preference?<p>I noticed the NY Times and other large publications use "adviser" and others strictly use "advisor".
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DanBC
Pick one and use it consistantly. If you're writing for someone else use their
style guide.

(<http://grammarist.com/spelling/adviser-advisor/>)

> _Adviser and advisor are both accepted spellings of the noun meaning one who
> advises or counsels. There is no difference between them. But adviser, the
> older version, is listed as the primary spelling in most dictionaries, and
> it is about five times as common as advisor in current news publications
> from throughout the English-speaking world._

> _In the U.S. and Canada, advisor is commonly used in official job titles,
> but adviser is still generally preferred over advisor in North America, and
> advisor is only marginally more common in American and Canadian English than
> in other varieties of English._

Did you know that there's an "English Language and Usage" stack exchange site?
This question seems like an excellent fit for them, although I understand that
they often reject such questions as off topic for a variety of odd reasons.

(<http://english.stackexchange.com/>)

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MrMike
I saw that as well. A quick google search showed a 15x preference toward
"advisor" based on the number of results for each.

~~~
DanBC
> A quick google search showed a 15x preference toward "advisor" based on the
> number of results for each.

You're right! I've just tried and found the same. (9xx,000,000 for Or vs
7x,000,000 for Er).

Any Googlers reading? I'm curious about these results.

I enter [advisor] into one Google.co.uk search (I'm signed into chrome if that
makes any difference to my 'bubble') and I enter [adviser] into another.
Because I'm not using ["advisor"] or ["adviser"] I expect Google to use the
words interchangably - the words are alternate spellings of each other.

But it doesn't seem like Google does substitute the words for each other. All
my results for adviser only have adviser, and all my hits for advisor only
have advisor.

I've criticised Google in the past for substituting words when it's not
wanted. But here's an example where I think they're not subbing words that
they should!

EDIT: For example, if I type [spectacles cases] Google will return and
highlight [glasses cases].

~~~
MrMike
Exactly. And the confusion compounds...

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itsprofitbaron
I always go with _advisor_ over adviser because, I believe that advisor looks
"right" as you look at it whereas, adviser looks strange.

The statistics back this up as well specifically, the exact global searches in
Google which are as follows:

Advisor - 74,000

Adviser - 33,100

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iterationx
This isn't english.stackexchange.com

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cjbenedikt
advisOr of course, it it's meant to be English ;-)

