Organize or organise?

Ian   Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:58 pm GMT
<< English is not my first language, but I was taught that the Americans actually tend to retain an "older" (i.e. original) English orthography as well as vocabulary. Wasn't "zee" the "original" pronunciation of this letter in English? >>

I don't know about Z, but the "-ize" spelling is in fact the original one.
"-ise" got introduced in England as an attempt to copy the French spelling, which was considered posh at the time.