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On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 4:38 AM, Andrew Warren <awarren -at- synaptics -dot- com> wrote:
> I'm not sure that "busses" was ever the primary spelling, at least in AmE.
>
> It's been "buses" for ages; I have standard electronics references from 40 years ago that spell it that way without comment. The only time I've ever seen it spelled "busses" was in the writings of pedantic old engineers who commonly hypercorrected everything else they wrote (e.g., "allows the user quickly to disconnect the cable").
>
> "Busses" will look wrong or impossibly old-fashioned.
I'm a baby boomer Canadian. At least when I was in school, we were taught
the Commonwealth spellings for most things, e.g. labour, but not all; e.g,
we'd have program not programme.
To me, doubling letters in words like busses and travelling is completely
normal. It would never occur to me not to. I have only seen traveling and
buses in the last few years, and both strike me as fairly ghastly
Americanisms.
Of course, I'm not your target audience; for them, buses may be
just fine.
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