Which spelling is correct—advisor or adviser?

Google argues for advisor. Searches yielded 741 million results for advisor versus only 132 million for adviser.

The SEC favors “adviser.”

When I ran a poll on this topic in 2012, “advisor” won over “adviser,” 79% to 21%. Most of my clients prefer “advisor,” too. However, some people whom I respect favor “adviser,” as you’ll see in Bill Winterberg’s tweet, the links below, and the comments on this post.

Updates to “Advisor vs. adviser”

July 2012 update:

Here are links to two recent articles on this topic:

• Should You Go to an Adviser or an Advisor? by Jason Zweig
• You write “advisor,” and I write “adviser” by Theresa Hamacher

March 2017 update: I removed the outdated poll reference and shared the results of that poll.

Also, see the advisor vs. adviser link in the following tweet, courtesy of Stephen Foreman:

@susanweiner Few articles more in-depth on this topic than this > https://t.co/zZC2psLSPU #advisor vs #adviser

— Stephen D. Forman (@ltcassociates) March 13, 2017

Phillip Shemella, author of “Advisor or Adviser: A data-journey for one word that goes both ways,” says, “advisor is a title, and adviser is anyone else who advises and is not already an advisor.”

“Adviser or advisor? The debate rages on” covers similar ground in Investment News.