color: Style Guide Spelling Decisions (AP, Chicago, MLA, APA)

How major style guides rule on "color"

Canonical -or/-our split. Same pattern: favor/favour, honor/honour, labor/labour, neighbor/neighbour.

The disagreement on "color" is an example of systematic American vs British English differences, the category of style-guide differences that most often confuses copy editors and creates inconsistency across long documents. Below is a guide-by-guide breakdown, drawn directly from the published editions cited.

What the divergence actually means

Unlike many compound-modernization decisions where style guides eventually converge, "color" continues to show genuine divergence between major guides. The AP Stylebook treats this as a settled call; Chicago Manual leaves more flexibility; and Merriam-Webster, as a descriptive dictionary, records both forms. Source: Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition

The APA Publication Manual aligns with AP and Chicago on "color", though APA generally addresses spelling questions only when they intersect with statistical reporting or technical psychology vocabulary. Where the manual is silent, APA defers to Merriam-Webster as its standard reference. Source: APA Publication Manual, 7th Edition

Merriam-Webster lists "color (UK: colour)", which serves as the lexicographic baseline for U.S. style decisions. Because Merriam-Webster's entries reflect aggregated published usage rather than editorial preference, when a guide says "follow Merriam-Webster", as APA does, that effectively delegates the call to whichever spelling has dominated the published corpus. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Garner's Modern English Usage classifies the "color" / "colour" pair on its Language-Change Index, a five-stage scale measuring whether a once-disputed form has been accepted into Standard English. For systematic American vs British English differences, Garner's typically rates the dominant form at Stage 4 ("ubiquitous but objected to by traditionalists") or Stage 5 ("fully accepted"). Source: Garner's Modern English Usage, 5th Edition

Practical guidance for editors

For working writers, the practical rule is straightforward: in journalism, follow AP; in academic writing in the humanities, follow MLA or Chicago; in social-science publishing, follow APA; in book publishing, follow Chicago. When no house style applies, Merriam-Webster's main entry is the safest default. The differences across these guides on "color" reflect not disagreement about correctness but different audiences and editorial pressures.

Editorial context

Google Books Ngrams data for the American English corpus shows color surpassing colour around 1820, shortly after Noah Webster's 1806 Compendious Dictionary advocated simplified spellings to distinguish U.S. usage from British norms. The shift accelerated after Webster's 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language, part of the broader spelling reforms of the early republic. By 1900, color appeared over 10 times more frequently than colour in U.S. books, a ratio that persists in the digital era. The pattern reflects cultural entrenchment, not just spelling preference, as in The flag's bold colors evoked national pride. Even in binational contexts U.S. editors favor color, with British spellings appearing mainly in academic imports and international technical manuals.

Cross-references

For the dictionary entry, frequency data, and pronunciation of color, see the main word page. For other style-guide spelling decisions in this category, browse all style-guide spelling rulings.