<p>i asked my teacher to proofread my essay because i love her to death and she's awesome!</p>
<p>BUT, i doubt her advice on this:</p>
<p>i wrote: " I smelt it in the air."</p>
<p>she said to change it to "I smelled it in the air." because smelt is not the right word. </p>
<p>what do you think?</p>
<p>She must not like the British.</p>
<p>If it sounds "good" to you, use it!</p>
<p>I may be wrong, but: Today, I smell it in the air.
Yesterday, I smelled it in the air.
In the past, I have smelt it in the air. ?? Just a guess.</p>
<p>Both are fine, I think.</p>
<p>It's one word. Don't sweat it.</p>
<p>smelled sounds better to me. i think you use "smelt" with a helping verb, like "had smelt" or "have smelt". i dunno though, i'm not an english person</p>
<p>NO----SMELT IS NOT A WORD. Its just phonetically how it sounds. for example, you say I spelt it, but you write I sspelled it. same thing.</p>
<p>smelt isn't a word? don't we "smelt ore"?</p>
<p>"I smelt" and "I smelled" are both grammatically correct -- "I smelt" is the British version of the verb. Given the screen name of the OP, I think "I smelled" may sound more natural coming from Houston high school student. However, either verb would be fine to use.</p>
<p>I don't have another "dictionaryish" source with me at the moment, but if dictionary.com has any credibility, "smelt" IS a word, and seems to be completely interchangeable with smelled. And I myself am pretty sure that "had smelled" works just as well as "had smelt". </p>
<p>I'm not sure what sort of school you're going to, but I know that all the English teachers I ever had in Kentucky were horrible at English, and I'm inclined to think that many public schools are the same way. Mine couldn't spell simple words and would use words like "conversate". I may not be out of Kentucky just yet, but at least I'm away from that horrible public school system. Maybe it was just my county's in particular. Whatever.</p>
<p>Whoa, I'm from Lexington, too. You're the first I've seen on CC. <em>eery music</em></p>
<p>I would use "smelled"....the more American version is probably better as you're sending it to American adcoms. "Smelt" may come off somewhat strangely unless it really fits with your writing style.</p>
<p>thanks for your advice</p>
<p>i went ahead and used "smelled"</p>
<p>smelt could be used because i just saw it in "wuthering heights"</p>
<p>but i wanted to be on the safe side</p>
<p>so.. did you guys turn in your app yet? I DID!!</p>
<p>the british spell "smelled" "smelt", but they also spell "choose" "chuse"...personal word/style choice i guess but i would play on the safe aka american side lest i be viewed as a psudo british literary poser or something.</p>