Faeces or Feces: Choosing the Right Spelling in Your Writing

Writers everywhere pause at the keyboard when the moment arrives to type that four-letter word for bodily waste. One “a” or two? The hesitation lasts only a second, yet the decision shapes how readers judge tone, training, and even trust.

Search engines record millions of queries for both spellings every year, and style guides quietly contradict one another. Understanding the difference prevents embarrassing corrections, lost credibility, and SEO misalignment.

Etymology: How the Two Spellings Emerged

“Faeces” entered English in the late fourteenth century through Latin “faex,” meaning dregs or sediment. Medieval scribes preserved the digraph “ae” to signal classical lineage, a habit that lingered in scientific Latin long after everyday English dropped it.

“Feces” surfaced during the eighteenth-century simplification wave led by lexicographers like Noah Webster. Webster argued that phonetic spellings served democracy better than etymological relics, so he trimmed the “a” and kept the hard “e” sound.

By 1806 Webster’s dictionaries listed “feces” as the primary headword, yet British medical tomes retained “faeces” well into the twentieth century. The Atlantic gradually widened the orthographic gap, turning a single word into a trans-continental shibboleth.

Regional Usage: Where Each Form Dominates

Open the online archives of the National Health Service and “faeces” appears on every faecal occult blood test form. Switch to the Centers for Disease Control site and “feces” headlines stool-sample instructions.

Canadian hospitals follow British tradition in pathology reports, but Canadian newspapers default to “feces” under CP Style rules. Australia splits the difference: government health portals prefer “faeces,” yet daily tabloids splash “poo” and “feces” across front pages.

India’s medical colleges teach “faeces” from British textbooks, while tech-support scripts written for U.S. clients switch to “feces.” South Africa’s Constitution mentions “faecal sludge” in official English, but Afrikaans-language media use “feces” in parallel translations.

Style Guide Snapshot: APA, AMA, Chicago, Oxford

APA 7th edition silently deletes the “a,” aligning with its general push for streamlined, Americanized terminology. AMA Manual of Style 12th edition does the same, recommending “feces” in every medical abstract.

Chicago Manual of Style leaves the choice to regional preference, then admits that most U.S. publishers expect “feces.” Oxford Style Manual stands alone among major guides, prescribing “faeces” for all British-English copy.

If you submit to a Lancet sister journal, the copy-editor will restore the “a” regardless of your original manuscript. Conversely, JAMA will strip it out within hours of acceptance.

Journal-Specific Exceptions

Nature journals allow either spelling but enforce internal consistency across each article. Peer reviewers rarely flag the variant unless tables and figures contradict the text.

BMJ and NEJM automatically convert American submissions to British spelling during typesetting, so U.S. authors can relax. Still, grant proposals destined for NIH must use “feces” to satisfy federal style sheets.

SEO Implications: Keyword Volume and Competition

Google’s Keyword Planner shows 110,000 monthly U.S. searches for “feces” versus 18,100 for “faeces.” Global English-language traffic skews even further toward the shorter form, giving it a 6:1 advantage.

Yet “faeces” carries higher intent in medical niches; CPC bids for faecal-related keywords top twelve dollars in the UK. Ignoring the British spelling can cost ad impressions across the Atlantic.

Duplicate content fears are unfounded: search engines treat the pair as regional variants, not keyword stuffing. Still, pick one primary form per URL and stick to it in H1, title tag, and meta description.

Hreflang Strategy

Publishers who run parallel UK and U.S. sites should map “faeces” to en-gb pages and “feces” to en-us. Implementing hreflang tags prevents the algorithm from merging the two audiences and flattening rankings.

A single global blog can alternate spellings by post, but internal links must remain consistent to avoid confusing crawlers. Anchor text is a ranking signal; mixed signals dilute topical authority.

Academic Writing: Dissertations, Theses, and Grant Proposals

Master’s students at the University of Edinburgh must follow the “faeces” convention per the school’s research handbook. A single deviation triggers automatic formatting flags before the viva.

NIH grant applications use the SF-424 form, which embeds U.S. Government Printing Office style—always “feces.” Reviewers notice inconsistency between proposal text and cited references, so harmonize before submission.

ProQuest’s global thesis database normalizes both spellings to its own controlled vocabulary, yet the original PDF remains untouched. Future employers reading your open-access dissertation will see whichever variant you chose.

Citation Practices

When quoting a British paper, retain the original spelling inside the quotation marks. Paraphrasing allows you to switch to your document’s dominant form without adding “[sic].”

Reference lists must preserve the source’s exact title, even if it conflicts with your text’s spelling. EndNote and Zotero handle this automatically when you import the DOI.

Medical and Clinical Contexts: Patient-Facing Materials

Consent forms written for a London clinic should say “faecal immunochemical test” to match NHS branding. American patients handed the same leaflet misread “faecal” as a typo and question the clinic’s professionalism.

Telehealth apps that auto-localize content can swap the spelling via IP geolocation. Fail to code the switch, and trust scores drop—users assume the provider is foreign and unfamiliar with local protocols.

Package inserts for stool-collection kits fall under FDA labeling rules in the United States, mandating “feces.” European CE-marked kits can use either, but bilingual German-English leaflets keep “faeces” to align with EU harmonized standards.

Accessibility Considerations

Screen-reader dictionaries contain both variants, yet phonetic engines pronounce “faeces” as two syllables “fay-ee-seez,” confusing visually impaired users. Testing with NVDA or JAWS often pushes American clinics toward “feces” for clarity.

Plain-language guidelines recommend the shorter spelling regardless of region because it reduces cognitive load for low-literacy patients. If the clinic serves multilingual populations, pair the term with icons rather than risking mispronunciation.

Publishing and Editing Workflows: Proofreading Tips

Create a custom style sheet at project kickoff; list “feces” or “faeces” in the first line to prevent later arguments. Share the sheet with copy-editors, designers, and marketing so captions match body text.

Run a global search for the opposite spelling before final pages—InDesign’s GREP can highlight every sneaky instance. Adobe’s spell-check dictionary defaults to American, flagging “faeces” unless you load the UK pack.

Print proofs often reintroduce the unwanted variant when overseas printers run auto-correct. Insert a paper note in the PDF margin reminding pre-press staff to preserve the approved form.

Version Control

Git repositories for multi-author textbooks benefit from a .gitignore line excluding temporary dictionaries. Otherwise contributor-side autocorrect commits the wrong spelling and triggers merge conflicts.

Set up a pre-commit hook that greps for the opposite variant and rejects the push. The five-minute script saves hours of re-proofing.

Legal and Regulatory Documents: Compliance Risks

Patent filings in the European Patent Office must use British spelling throughout, including “faeces,” or risk formal rejection under Rule 50. U.S. continuation applications switch to “feces” to satisfy USPTO examiner expectations.

Environmental impact statements submitted to the UK Environment Agency mention “faecal coliforms,” whereas EPA filings require “fecal coliforms.” Copy-pasting between jurisdictions without adjustment can invalidate sections of the report.

Product liability lawsuits hinge on precise terminology; a defense attorney once undermined an expert witness by highlighting inconsistent spelling in lab notebooks. The jury perceived the discrepancy as carelessness.

Everyday Digital Writing: Blogs, Social Media, Email

Recipe bloggers discussing “fecal contamination in salad greens” rank faster with the American spelling because Google’s index weights user location. British food writers can still target local readers by using “faeces” plus geo-modifiers like “UK supermarket.”

LinkedIn articles reach global audiences; pick the variant that matches your byline biography. If your profile lists “London-based,” readers expect “faeces,” while “San Francisco” primes them for “feces.”

Email newsletters allow A/B testing: send “faeces” to half the list and “feces” to the other, then measure click-through. Most campaigns find no significant difference, but highly regulated sectors see slight preference for regional conformity.

Hashtag Strategy

Twitter collapses both spellings into the same search results, yet trending hashtags favor the shorter form for character economy. Instagram alt-text, however, rewards exact matches, so mirror your caption choice.

TikTok captions read aloud by automated voices stumble over “faeces,” often rendering it incomprehensible. Creators aiming for clarity opt for “feces” or the informal “poo.”

Translation and Localization: Beyond English

French translators render the concept as “matières fécales,” adopting the American root. Spanish uses “heces,” dropping the vowel conflict entirely, yet bilingual packaging must still decide which English variant appears alongside.

Japanese medical journals transliterate the word into katakana as フィーシーズ, closer to “feces” phonetics. If the accompanying English abstract uses “faeces,” readers perceive a jarring mismatch.

Software interfaces that crowd-source translations often lock the source string to one spelling; changing later forces expensive retranslation of all downstream languages. Decide before coding begins.

Brand Voice and Corporate Communication

A pet-care startup headquartered in Boston markets “feces removal” services across North America. When the same brand expands to the UK, it registers a mirror domain using “faeces” to preserve local authenticity.

Pharmaceutical giants like GSK maintain dual microsites: one for “faecal transplant research” targeting European clinicians, another for “fecal microbiota therapy” aimed at U.S. investors. Each site blocks the opposite spelling via robots.txt to prevent cannibalization.

Internal Slack channels dedicated to regulatory affairs pin a language policy message reminding staff to mirror the spelling of the destination market. New hires receive a two-minute Loom video explaining why the choice matters more than grammar pedantry.

Practical Checklist for Writers

Open your style guide first, not the dictionary. Identify the regional audience, then lock the spelling in a global find-replace before drafting a single paragraph.

Add both variants to your spell-check exclusion list so red squiggles remind you of the commitment. Store the choice in project metadata for future updates.

Finally, schedule a last-minute search after layout, because the word has a sneaky way of reappearing in figure legends, captions, and alt text.