All the changes I have made to these files have been to fix mistakes
and inconsistencies I found while comparing the american, british, and
altamer spellings.  If you look at the CVS logs you'll see what each
change was, and the justification for it.  I was able to check Collins
dictionary (and sometimes the OED) to find british usage - but for
american spelling I just had to guess and often take the more cautious
approach (allowing two variants because I didn't feel able to decide
which one was 'correct').

I believe I've now corrected all the things I found, apart from this
one:

  Ispell is inconsistent about aesthetic and words derived from it.
  Unaesthetic is allowed in both british and american, but aesthetic
  is british only.  Similarly aestheticism is english but aesthetical
  is british (american has esthetical, etc).  Perhaps this apparent
  inconsistency reflects American usage - I can't really say.  It
  looks sensible to me to have anesthetic because of the short-E
  pronunciation, even if the long-E in aesthetic gets an AE.  I do
  know that the spelling aesthetic is quite common in American
  writings.

But please let me know if you can spot any more.  Advice would also be
appreciated on which of the American dictionaries is the authoritative
one to use (there are so many calling themselves Webster's, it gets
very confusing).

-- Ed Avis, ed@doc.ic.ac.uk, 2002-06-15
