Story vs. Storey

Story

An absolutely common word, story is used by everyone to describe events that are real or imaginary, usually told for entertainment. Story can be short or long and can describe past, present, or possible future events. Story is a noun, and its plural word is stories.

Some synonyms of story are: narrative, tale, recital, anecdote, etc.

The word story originated from the Latin word ‘Historia’ or history.

Story is also used to describe a false statement, gossip, or rumour, as in, “She likes to cook stories…”, which means that she likes to tell stories that are not true.

Business storytelling: In a business scenario, storytelling means using stories to present facts. If facts are presented in a raw form, they might be boring to the audience, but when stories are created around the facts, audience can relate more to the facts and grasp them easily.

Success story: A success story is a story of someone who has achieved something great (like respect, wealth, fame) with efforts.

Social media stories: We hear a lot about Facebook stories, Instagram stories and now even LinkedIn stories. People put their own moments of the day, or important events that happened at their end to keep everyone in their circle updated. These are called as stories.

Examples:

·         The moral story of the Hare and the tortoise is really very good.

·         The story was engaging and nail-biting.

·         This was the top story in the newspaper today.

·         With social media, you can’t imagine the number of stories going around a simple piece of news.

·         She concocted a story about her grandmother being unwell.

·         He changes his story according to the situation!

·         Data Science has changed the whole story of modern banking and finance industries.

Storey

Storey with the ‘e’ is referred to a level of a building having multiple levels. For example, if an apartment has 7 levels, then it is called as a 7-storey apartment. The word storey was derived from story, but has completely different meaning. The plural word for storey is storeys. More common synonyms of the word storey are – floor & level.

Storey doesn’t include the ground level and the open terrace level.

Some examples:

·         They moved to a 4-storey house due to lack of space.

·         He recently bought an office on the 3^rd floor of the newly constructed 47-storey building.

·         The building is a sleek glass structure of 54 storeys.

·         We have a 2-storeyed parking at the backside of the office.

There is one catch though – the word ‘storey’ is used only in UK English, whereas even for referring to a level or floor, US English uses the word ‘story’!

So, remember that, in the US, you use story to refer to a tale and the level of a building, whereas in UK, a floor is indicated by using the storey with the ‘e’!

“I told them a haunted story about the 2-storey building near their school!”