Catalog and catalogue are the same word, and both spellings are correct. Use catalog for American readers and catalogue for British, Australian, and most other Commonwealth readers.
The difference between catalogue and catalog is only spelling. The meaning and the sound are identical.
That one rule covers most sentences you’ll write. The rest of this page covers what it doesn’t settle: the verb forms, proper names, quotations, and readers outside the US and UK.
Which Spelling Readers Expect in Each Country
The writing-tool company Sapling tracks which spelling shows up in each country. It doesn’t publish its method, so read these as rough shares, not exact counts.
| Country | Usual spelling | Share of uses |
| United States | catalog | 92% |
| Philippines | catalog | 63% |
| Australia | catalogue | 96% |
| United Kingdom | catalogue | 88% |
| New Zealand | catalogue | 84% |
| Ireland | catalogue | 82% |
| India | catalogue | 77% |
| Canada | catalogue | 65% |
Canada and India lean toward catalogue, but not as strongly as Britain does. Writers there will see both spellings every week.
Cataloged or Catalogued? Match The Other Forms to Your Noun
The verb (the action word, “to catalog”) and the other forms follow the same split.
| Form | American | British |
| Noun | catalog | catalogue |
| Plural | catalogs | catalogues |
| Past tense | cataloged | catalogued |
| -ing form | cataloging | cataloguing |
| Person who does it | cataloger | cataloguer |
| Older works by an artist | back catalog | back catalogue |
Here are the American forms in use:
- She cataloged every receipt from the kitchen remodel in a shared spreadsheet.
- The museum hired a cataloger to describe 2,000 donated photographs.
- The label bought the singer’s back catalog, so it now owns her first six albums.
Merriam-Webster gives both “cataloged” and “catalogued” for American English. Still, pick the forms that match your noun so the page reads as one style.
The verb has a lesser-known meaning too: “to be listed at a certain price.”
- That 1918 inverted-airplane stamp catalogs at far more than its face value.
The noun can mean a long run of bad things, not just a list of products. Oxford’s learner’s dictionary gives “a catalogue of errors” as a typical use.
- The film session laid out a catalogue of missed free throws.
Is “Catalogue” Wrong in American Writing?
No. Merriam-Webster lists “catalog” first and “catalogue” as a variant, with no “British” label attached.
Learner’s dictionaries mark the split more plainly. Britannica’s learner’s dictionary labels “catalog” as chiefly US. Oxford’s British learner’s dictionary puts “catalogue” first and notes the US form.
Style guides that follow Merriam-Webster land on catalog:
| Source | Spelling it points you to | Why |
| Chicago Manual of Style | catalog | Uses the first spelling Merriam-Webster lists |
| Google developer style guide | catalog | Uses the first spelling Merriam-Webster lists |
| ALA Choice style guide | catalog, cataloged, cataloging | Lists them as house spellings |
| Garner’s usage guide (1998) | catalogue | Called it the better form |
| Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) | either | Treated both as standard |
The two usage guides at the bottom disagree, and that’s honest disagreement among experts. Current American editing practice sides with Chicago and Google.
A real example from American magazine writing shows the usual choice. In Architectural Digest, a line quoted in Merriam-Webster’s entry reads: “Meyers doesn’t pull her sets from a catalog.”
So “catalogue” isn’t a mistake in US writing. In edited American prose, though, it will look like a deliberate choice.
When a Name, a Quote, or A Field Picks The Spelling for You
The country rule works for ordinary sentences. These cases override it.
| Situation | What to write |
| Ordinary sentence for US readers | catalog |
| Ordinary sentence for UK or Australian readers | catalogue |
| Title, organization, or product name | The owner’s spelling |
| Direct quotation | The spelling in the original |
| “catalogue raisonné” | Keep the -ue |
| Verb and -ing forms | Match your noun |
| Canadian readers | Usually catalogue; check your house style |
Proper Names Keep Their Own Spelling
A name belongs to whoever made it. You don’t respell it to match your readers.
- Astronomers still refer to the Andromeda Galaxy by its New General Catalogue number.
That catalog of galaxies and star clusters dates from 1888, and the title keeps its British spelling in American science writing.
Librarians in the US have long worked from the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. The editors chose the -ue spelling on purpose, and American catalogers cite the title that way.
The reverse happens too. The web standards group W3C named its format the Data Catalog Vocabulary. A UK government page recommending the same standard spells it “Data Catalogue Vocabulary.”
The safer choice is the owner’s spelling. A reader searching for the standard will find the official name faster.
French Phrases Stay French
A catalogue raisonné is a complete scholarly list of an artist’s works. The phrase is French, so English writers usually keep it as it is, even in American texts.
Quotations and Cited Titles Stay as Written
Inside quotation marks, keep the source’s spelling. An American article quoting the BBC should keep the British form:
“Springsteen sold his back catalogue to Sony in 2021 for $500m” (BBC, via Dictionary.com)
The same goes for book and journal titles in a reference list.
One Document, One Spelling
Mixing “catalog” and “cataloguing” on one page looks careless, even though Merriam-Webster allows both. Librarian Jeffrey Beall describes an article of his where an editor changed “Cataloging” to “Cataloguing” in the title but not in the text.
The split causes search problems too. A database search for “cataloguing” can miss everything titled “cataloging.” If you’re researching, search both spellings.
Readers in Canada, India, and The Philippines
Canadian and Indian readers lean toward catalogue. Filipino readers lean toward catalog, the American form.
The Chicago Manual of Style lets Canadian writers use a Canadian dictionary and still follow Chicago. Canada’s national library uses the British form in its job titles, such as “Monographs Cataloguing.”
Readers Spread Across Many Countries
No style guide sets one spelling for a worldwide audience. Match the rest of your page instead.
If you write “color” and “center,” write “catalog.” If you write “colour” and “centre,” write “catalogue.”
Libraries, Where Both Spellings Live Side By Side
Library work is where the two spellings bump into each other most. American librarians used rules titled with “Cataloguing,” while the ALA’s Choice style guide uses “cataloging.”
British librarians found their own way out. In 2019 the Cataloguing and Indexing Group of CILIP, the UK library association, voted to rename itself the Metadata and Discovery Group.
Noah Webster Didn’t Give Americans “Catalog”
Many spelling guides credit Noah Webster with dropping the -ue. His own 1828 dictionary lists the word as “CATALOGUE.” The 1913 revision of Webster’s still spelled the verb “catalogued” and “cataloguing.”
Both spellings are old. The Oxford English Dictionary, as cited by Beall, records “catalogue” around 1535 and “catalog” in 1587.
The modern American spelling came from a later reform movement:
| Year | What happened |
| 1828 | Webster’s dictionary spells the word “catalogue.” |
| 1876 | A committee of the American Philological Association proposes 11 new spellings, including “catalog,” “giv,” and “thru.” |
| 1876 | Melvil Dewey, a spelling reformer, still puts “Cataloguing” in the title of his library classification pamphlet. |
| 1897 or 1898 | The National Education Association adopts 12 short spellings, including “catalog” and “program.” Sources disagree on the year. |
| 1906 | The Simplified Spelling Board puts “catalog” on its list of 300 words. That August, President Theodore Roosevelt orders the government printer to use the list. |
| 1935 | The Chicago Tribune adds “catalog” to its house style. Writer H. L. Mencken says the spelling was already common by then. |
| 1970s | In American books, “catalog” becomes the more common spelling, based on Google Books data. |
Most of those reformed spellings never caught on. Nobody writes “giv” or “thoro” in formal English today.
Why “catalog” survived is still an open question. Linguist Lynne Murphy suggests it’s the most commercial word of the group, and the one closest to Dewey’s library world.
Why Americans Write “Catalog” But Still Write “Dialogue”
Don’t assume American English drops the -ue from every word like this. It mostly doesn’t.
Murphy checked a corpus, a large searchable collection of real American writing. Her counts show “catalog” is the only word in the family where the short form wins.
| Word | -ogue spelling | -og spelling |
| catalog(ue) | 2,559 | 4,955 |
| dialog(ue) | 12,657 | 702 |
| monolog(ue) | 1,098 | 7 |
| prolog(ue) | 890 | 3 |
Over half of those “dialog” uses were in “dialog box,” the computer term. In ordinary American sentences, write dialogue, monologue, and prologue.
For everyday writing, follow your readers: catalog in the US and the Philippines, catalogue in Britain, Australia, Canada, and India. Once you choose, carry the same spelling into cataloged or catalogued, and leave names and quotations exactly as their owners wrote them.
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I’m Hazel, and I studied BSC English at GCUF. I focus on explaining word meanings in simple, clear language that anyone can understand. My goal is helping readers grasp everyday English, confusing terms, and slang used in real conversations and social media. I believe language learning works best when definitions connect to actual life situations. Through careful research and straightforward explanations, I make vocabulary accessible for students, learners, and anyone curious about how English really works in daily use.