Oxford spelling is used by many UK-based academic journals (for example, Nature) and many international organizations (for example, the United Nations and its agencies).
In digital documents, Oxford spelling may be indicated by the IETF language tag en-GB-oxendict (or historically by en-GB-oed).
The Oxford English Dictionary lists the ‑ise form of words separately, as "a frequent spelling of ‑IZE ...": This practice probably began first in French; in modern French the suffix has become ‑iser, alike in words from Greek, as baptiser, évangéliser, organiser, and those formed after them from Latin, as civiliser, cicatriser, humaniser.
However, the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Greek ‑ιζειν, Latin ‑izāre; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic.
One group of such words is those ending in ‑lyse, such as analyse, paralyse and catalyse, which come from the Greek verb λύω, lyo, the perfective (aorist) stem of which is ‑lys-: for these, ‑lyse is the more etymological spelling.
Others include advertise, arise, compromise, chastise, disguise, improvise, prise (in the sense of open), and televise.
[8] The newspaper's chief revise editor, Richard Dixon, wrote of the change:[8] In the great -ize versus -ise debate, The Times has opted latterly for simplicity over a sort of erudition ...