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English grammar and communications hints and tips

Is it program or programme?

There is always the difficulty of recognising American English spellings and British English spellings with words like these.

Whether we like it or not, much of our language is now heavily influenced by American English spellings.

So, for the noun, ‘program’ is used when talking of the IT world – it is something we run on a computer.

Example:

This computer program is not responding.

When referring to television or training, we would use the noun ‘programme’.

Examples:

This TV programme is really great. We must watch it next week.
The programme of events was interesting at the sports day.
The training day had several programmes to choose from.

For the verb, ‘program’ is used for all instances.

Examples:

We must program this DVD-player to work properly.
He was going to program the robot to do this for us.
They programmed the machine several times.

Remember, whenever you have those niggling queries going around the office (like ‘where to put this apostrophe’, ‘do we use that or which; dispatch or despatch; complimentary or complementary; practise or practice’), do just simply drop us an e-mail or call.

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