Does one fill out a form or does one fill in a form? I’ve gotten different answers from the people I’ve asked.
Google search results:
- fill in a form — 14,200,000
- fill out a form — 7,000,000
Answer
It appears that this is a British/American distinction. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) reports 92 incidences of “fill out a/the/this form” and just 2 of “fill in a/the/this form”, clearly establishing “fill out” as the standard idiom in American English. I haven’t worked out how to search the British National Corpus yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the results were reversed there.
Edit:
OK, I got the BNC to respond to queries—although it sure takes its sweet time—and I got 19+7=26 results for “fill in a/the form”, and 5+1=6 for “fill out a/the form”. So it does appear that British English favors fill in over fill out, although not to the degree to which American English favors fill out over fill in.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : aviraldg , Answer Author : nohat
