Is written Canadian English closer to American English or British English?

I'm having some writing done for a website aimed at a Canadian audience. In order to leverage our resources more, I'd like to focus on American English or British English.

So, is written Canadian English closer to American English or British English?

Note: My current understanding is that Canadians tend to use American vocabulary but British spelling, except for certain -ize words (in which case they use the American spelling). How accurate is this understanding?

Solution 1:

Your understanding is correct. They have strong connections with England. (Canadians still have the queen's picture of some of their bank notes). Due to the proximity as well as the Media influence, the language is pretty much American.

Lately, even the pronunciation of some words has been changing. For example, "schedule". Years ago, the tendency was to pronounce it with the sound of a 'k', as "skedule". It's been changing over the years. There seems to be a liking or even an admiration for BrE.

Solution 2:

As a Canadian, I can firmly tell you that we use a wide blend of British and American spelling/pronunciation. Basically, any word in English derived from French that ends in '-or' or '-er' usually keeps the British spelling (think colour, honour, and centre) but it isn't unusual to see the American spelling for these words. We do spell a lot of things the American way, liked using '-ed' endings instead of '-t' for conjugated verbs (like 'burnED cookies' versus 'burnT cookies'), but I've seen people write with both endings. Endings with '-ize' are a little more complicated, because we tend to use both interchangeably and it depends on the person writing and their preferences and tendencies.

Really, when it comes down to it, we Canadian's aren't too picky. In elementary and high school teachers tend to favour the British spelling of words, but otherwise, it doesn't particularly matter to us. Written English is written English; we understand it whether you use American or British spelling. Use whichever spelling you'd like - I know that I use a healthy mix of both.

(And yes, we have 10-story buildings and 10-storey buildings. It depends on who's writing the words, but I personally use 'storey'.)