“Coloring” or “Colouring”—What's the difference?

Usage by country

Where each spelling is used

Of the 12 countries below, 6 prefer “coloring” and 5 prefer “colouring”. Usage levels are out of 100; the more common spelling in each country is in bold.

Usage level out of 100 (if available).
Country	coloring	colouring	Preference
United States	100	0	“coloring”
United Kingdom	25	75	“colouring”
India	39	61	“colouring”
Philippines	99	1	“coloring”
Canada	63	37	“coloring”
Australia	23	77	“colouring”
Liberia	0	0	Not enough data
Ireland	28	72	“colouring”
New Zealand	27	73	“colouring”
Jamaica	53	47	“coloring”
Trinidad & Tobago	53	47	“coloring”
Guyana	51	49	“coloring”

Usage

Examples in context

Real sentences for each spelling. Hover an example to copy it.

“coloring”

…Hulk was initially grey, but coloring problems led to the creature…
…entire lives with rather unexciting coloring.
Note that, in a minimal k-coloring of any graph G, contracting…
…all had Earth atmosphere and coloring because they could not afford…
Girth and graph coloring
…– Chance the Rapper from Coloring Book, 2016 (music video shows…
Using the same coloring scheme of the traditional Chinese…
Classic hypergraph coloring is assigning one of the…
…is included in the “Artists Coloring Book Vol.
Page coloring

“colouring”

…dark atmosphere and subtle artificial colouring.
…name derives from the brown colouring of the rock forming the…
…linear and freehand drawing, geometry, colouring, ornamental design, flower-painting, china-painting, and
…characters including a uniformly grey colouring with only small dark spots…
…little or no range of colouring.
…ambient street scenes with vibrant colouring.
…of tartar, sugar, and red colouring matter very sensitive to the…
…published a volume titled Mindless colouring 101.
…dramatic differences in the tone colouring.
He modelled his tone of colouring on the painting of old

Examples are Wikipedia snippets under the CC ShareAlike 3.0 license.

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