Catalog or Catalogue? Both Are Right

A catalog is a systematic list — of goods for sale, works in a museum, courses at a university or stars in the sky. The two spellings are the same word: catalog is American, catalogue is British, Irish, Australian and Canadian, and both are correct in their own place.

• A list of goods for sale. *Order it from the catalog.*
• A systematic list of items. *The library catalog.*
• A record of an artist's work. *A catalogue raisonne.*
• To list systematically (verb). *They catalogued every find.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• The museum published a full catalogue of the exhibition.Often a substantial book in its own right.
• A catalogue of errors led to the accident.Figurative — a long list of failures.
• Astronomers catalogued four thousand new objects.The verb, meaning to record systematically.

The -og and -ogue split

• catalog / catalogue — American short form widely used
• dialog / dialogue — American writers mostly still prefer dialogue except in computing
• analog / analogue — the short form dominates in electronics everywhere
• monolog / monologue — the long form survives almost everywhere
• The shortening was a nineteenth-century reform that only ever went partway

From Greek *katalogos*, a register, from *katalegein*, to list — literally to pick out and set down. A *catalogue raisonne* is the complete annotated record of an artist's works, and keeps the French spelling even in American writing.