Should you write fiance (with one e) or fiancee (with two e’s)? When I read a headline this morning, fiance looked ‘strange’ to me – and so I wanted to find out the current state of play regarding how to write the word.
Most people will know what you mean regardless of how you spell it. I just advise subs and reporters to be consistent. As you can see in the above image, there’s one spelling in the headline and a different one in the story. When I train newsrooms I urge writers to be consistent – in broadcast news try to pronounce words in the ‘live’ intro in a similar way to the way a word is pronounced in an ‘already recorded’ package. In print, try to match the headline to the copy spelling in the story.
Anyway, if you are curious about whether it’s fiance or fiancee…
According to the sources I read, the word is borrowed from the French and, before that , Latin – and fiance is for a male and fiancee is for a female.
English is ‘gender-neutral’ – unlike other languages where letters on the end of words show masculine or feminine.
According to dictionary.com, the modern trend is to prefer – fiance.
I was educated to write fiancee – which is technically the ‘correct’ way to refer to a female fiancee.
Well, now you know the difference between fiance and fiancee!
I encourage writers in newsrooms to be aware of different spellings of potential problem ‘borrowed words’ and strive for consistency. When you use a foreign word, just check for consistency between headline and story or in broadcast, intro and package. I bet many readers who were educated to write fiancee (as I was) thought the headline looked incorrect.