Judgement or judgment?

Question

As part of something that I am writing, I am planning to include the following sentence:

Please reserve your judgment until after reading the entire plan.

But would it be more correct with the alternate form of judgment, 'judgement' so it reads:

Please reserve your judgement until after reading the entire plan.

Based on what I found online, judgment is more commonly used, but judgement is also acceptable. I grew up spelling it 'judgement,' but is it really more correct to say 'judgment'?

Also, as a side note, I am writing in America, so in American English and not British English.

Answer 1

Merriam Webster suggests that the variant without the "e" is the main one and the variant with the "e" is an acceptable alternative.

Google n-grams suggests that the variant with the "e" is much less common, especially around 1900.

Searches for both find that respected newspapers have used both.

So what you have found is correct. The usual spelling is "judgment" but "judgement" is an acceptable alternative.

This means that both are correct. You should be consistent, and unless you have particular reasons for choosing "judgement" you should just follow the herd and write "judgment".

Answer 2

The simple answer is that in British English, judgement is the quality of being able to decide things wisely, and a judgment is a decision given by a judge in a court case. In American English, both of these things are spelled 'judgement'.