I never know how to spell the various derived forms of "cancel" that
come up from time to time.
[rhaas pgsql]$ for a in canceled cancelled canceling cancelling
cancelation cancellation; do echo -n $a:; git grep $a | wc -l; done
canceled: 161
cancelled: 10
canceling: 141
cancelling: 4
cancelation: 0
cancellation: 51
So, apparently, we have a strong preference for spelling cancellation
with two "l"s, but we have a strong preference for spelling
"canceling" and "canceled" with only one "l". Here are the number of
Google hits for each of these spellings:
canceled: About 1,520,000,000 results
cancelled: About 144,000,000 results
canceling: About 12,200,000 results
cancelling: About 20,900,000 results
cancelation: About 1,550,000 results (did you mean cancellation?)
cancellation: About 109,000,000 results
So Google thinks that our practice of using one "l" in canceled and
two in "cancellation" is typical, but our use of a single "l" for
"canceling" is a minority position (though it's close).
http://grammarist.com/spelling/cancel/ thinks that cancellation should
have two "l"s and that the others have two "l"s outside the United
States but that the United States is switching from two "L"s to one,
with a single "L" now predominating. I have to admit that before I
got involved with PostgreSQL, I thought that all of these had two
"L"s, which maybe shows that I am old-fashioned, or just old. I
personally find this whole thing quite annoying as it takes up brain
space that seems like it might be better used for other things, but
unless we're willing to standardize on the double-"L" spelling for
everything, I guess I'll just have to keep checking our practice for
that particular word every time I use any of them.
I will be heading up to Ottawa in a few hours, assuming my plane
flight does not get cancellllled.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company