Cheque vs Check: Meaning and Spelling by Country

A cheque (British and Australian spelling) and a check (American spelling) are the same thing when you're talking about a written order telling a bank to pay money from your account. Americans use check for that meaning, while the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand use cheque.

The catch is that check has plenty of other meanings in every country: to examine, a tick mark, a checked pattern, a chess move. British and Australian English reserve cheque only for the bank document. So this isn't a simple swap; it's one American word doing the work of two British ones.

Quick answer: For the bank payment, write check in the US and cheque in the UK, Australia and Canada. For every other meaning (examine, verify, a pattern, the restaurant bill in the US), the spelling is check everywhere.

On this page

1. How cheque and check relate
2. All the meanings, side by side
3. US vs UK vs Australia
4. Fixed expressions
5. Example sentences
6. Common mistakes
7. The exception that isn't about money: chequered vs checkered
8. A memory trick
9. The vocabulary of writing one
10. Spelling in practice
11. Practice quiz
12. One rule to carry with you

How cheque and check relate

Both words come from the same source. Check entered English in the Middle Ages from Old French eschec, linked to the game of chess and ultimately to the Persian word shah, "king". "Check!" warned your opponent that their king was under attack, and from that came the senses of stopping, restraining and verifying.

By the eighteenth century, check was also used for a counterfoil or token that could be compared against an original, a way of "checking" for fraud. The bank order grew out of that idea. British writers later began spelling the banking sense cheque, probably influenced by exchequer, the old name for the government department handling revenue. The two spellings separated the money meaning from all the others.

American English never adopted cheque, and Noah Webster's push for simpler, more phonetic spellings kept check as the single form in the US.

• Pronunciation: CHECK, everywhere. Cheque and check sound identical.
• Part of speech: cheque is a noun only. Check is a noun and a verb.

All the meanings, side by side

The table shows what really matters: British and Australian readers don't just spell the bank word differently, they also use different words (bill, tick, cloakroom) where Americans say check.

US vs UK vs Australia

United States

There is one word: check. You write a check, cash a check, deposit a check, check your balance and ask the server for the check. Compounds include checkbook, paycheck, checking account and traveler's check. Writing cheque in an American context looks British or affected.

United Kingdom

Cheque is the bank document only. The British write a cheque, pay by cheque, use a chequebook, keep a cheque guarantee card (an older term) and talk about a bounced cheque. A British bank account you use for everyday spending is a current account, not a "checking account". Everything else uses check: "Can you check the times?" "I like your check shirt."

For the restaurant, a British diner asks for the bill. A tick mark is a tick, so a British form says "tick the box" rather than "check the box".

Australia

Australian English follows British practice: cheque for the payment, check for everything else, bill at a restaurant and tick on a form. Australians, like Britons, have an everyday transaction account or everyday account rather than a checking account. Cheque use has fallen steeply in Australia, and the government has announced a plan to phase out the cheque system, but the spelling remains standard wherever cheques are mentioned, including in fixed phrases.

Canada

Canadians use cheque for the bank document, as in the UK, and also write chequing account and paycheque. Like Americans, though, Canadians commonly ask for "the check" or "the bill" at restaurants. Canada is a good example of English that sits between the two systems.

Fixed expressions

Several idioms come from banking. Their meaning doesn't change by country; only the spelling of the bank word does.

Note that rain check and reality check use check everywhere because they come from the "examine/token" sense, not the bank sense. Writing "rain cheque" in British English is a common hypercorrection.

Example sentences

Banking (the split)

1. Megan wrote a check for the rent and dropped it in the landlord's mailbox in Denver. (US)
2. My grandad still insists on paying the window cleaner by cheque. (UK)
3. The council no longer accepts cheques for parking fines in Hobart. (AU)
4. Deposit your paycheck before Friday so the money clears. (US)
5. The cheque bounced, and the bank charged him a fee. (UK/AU)
6. Fill in the date, the amount in words and your signature on the cheque. (AU)
7. The insurance company mailed a check for $2,300 to cover the repairs. (US)

Examine / verify (same everywhere)

8. Can you check whether the train from York is running late?
9. Please check the attachment before you send the email to the client.
10. Ruby checked the oil before the drive from Sydney to Canberra.
11. The editor double-checked every quote in the article.

Workplace and email

12. "Hi Sam, could you check that the cheque from Harris & Co has cleared?" (UK)
13. "Just checking in: did you receive the check we mailed last week?" (US)
14. "Our office in Geelong doesn't take cheques any more; please pay by bank transfer." (AU)
15. "Accounts will issue your refund check within ten business days." (US)

Restaurants, forms and other uses

16. We asked the waiter for the check, then split it four ways. (US)
17. Could we have the bill, please? (UK/AU)
18. Put a check mark next to each completed task. (US)
19. Tick the box if you'd like to receive our newsletter. (UK/AU)
20. Her brother wore a red-and-black check flannel shirt to the barbecue.
21. The bishop put the king in check, and the game was over in three moves.
22. The new law is meant to keep corporate power in check.

News style

23. The government handed the agency a blank cheque to rebuild after the floods. (AU)
24. Critics say Congress gave the Pentagon a blank check. (US)

Common mistakes

❌ Please cheque the figures before Monday. (UK) ✅ Please check the figures before Monday. Cheque is never a verb.

❌ I'll take a rain cheque on dinner. (UK/AU) ✅ I'll take a rain check on dinner. This idiom uses check in every country.

❌ Can we have the cheque, please? (at a London restaurant) ✅ Can we have the bill, please?

❌ She wrote a check for £50. (British context) ✅ She wrote a cheque for £50.

❌ I paid by checque / chequ / cheq. ✅ I paid by cheque.

❌ I need to open a checking account in Brisbane. ✅ I need to open an everyday (transaction) account in Brisbane. Not a spelling error, but an Americanism that Australian banks don't use.

❌ Cheque your spelling with a cheque-list. ✅ Check your spelling with a checklist.

The exception that isn't about money: chequered vs checkered

There is one place where British and Australian English use the -que- spelling outside banking. The adjective meaning "marked with a pattern of squares" is chequered in the UK and Australia and checkered in the US. You'll see it in:

• the chequered flag / the checkered flag: the black-and-white flag waved at the end of a motor race
• a chequered history / a checkered past: a record with both good and bad episodes, often with a hint of scandal
• chequered tiles / checkered tiles: a floor or tablecloth in alternating squares

This is confusing, because the plain pattern word is check everywhere ("a check shirt," "checked fabric"). The -ered adjective simply kept the older French-influenced spelling in British usage. So a British writer can correctly describe "a checked tablecloth" and "a chequered tablecloth" in the same article; both mean the same thing.

Two related names follow the same split. The board game Americans call checkers is usually draughts in Britain and Australia. And Chequers, the British prime minister's country house, is a proper name and keeps its spelling in every country.

A memory trick

Link the British spelling to the money it represents:

A cheque ends in -que, like the queue at the bank where you used to cash it.

Or connect it to exchequer, the old British treasury: money things get the fancy French-looking ending, everything else gets plain check.

For American English, remember that Americans check everything with one word: they check the time, check their coats and pay by check.

The vocabulary of writing one

If you're writing about the process of paying by cheque or check, the surrounding words differ by country too. This matters for forms, banking guides and fiction set in a particular place.

A crossed cheque, marked with two parallel lines, is a British and Australian practice that means the cheque must be paid into a bank account rather than cashed over the counter. American checks don't usually use crossings. A cheque that bounces in Australia may be described more formally as dishonoured, using the British-style spelling with a u.

There are also differences in what you write. American checks ask you to write the amount in words ending with a fraction for cents ("Forty-two and 50/100"), while British cheques usually say "Forty-two pounds 50p" or similar. If you're writing a how-to guide, show the convention your readers will actually use.

Spelling in practice

When you write for a British or Australian audience, run a quick search for every check in your document and ask: is this the bank document? If yes, change it to cheque; if no, leave it. When you write for Americans, search for cheque and change all of them to check.

Remember compounds too. Chequebook (UK/AU) becomes checkbook (US). Cheque account (AU, an older term) has no American equivalent beyond checking account.

For other spelling pairs that change by region, see colour vs color and programme vs program, the latter of which also involves a French-style ending. If you want the full map of differences, our British vs American vs Australian spelling guide lays them out by pattern.

Practice quiz

Fill in cheque, check or bill to suit the audience.

1. (UK) "Could you ______ that the door is locked?"
2. (AU) "The school fees can be paid by card, transfer or ______."
3. (US) "We got the ______ and left a twenty percent tip."
4. (UK) "At the end of the meal, Raj asked for the ______."
5. (US) "Her first ______ from the new job went straight into savings."
6. (AU) "I'll have to take a rain ______ on the footy this weekend."

Answers

1. check — the verb "to examine" is check in every country.
2. cheque — the bank payment in Australian English.
3. check — Americans use check for a restaurant bill.
4. bill — British diners ask for the bill, not the cheque or check.
5. check (or paycheck) — the American spelling for a payment.
6. check — rain check uses check everywhere.

One rule to carry with you

Ask yourself one question: is it a paper order to a bank? If it is, and your readers are British, Australian or Canadian, write cheque; if they're American, write check. For every other sense of the word, whether you're verifying a fact, describing a pattern or calling a chess move, check is correct everywhere.