Am I crazy, or am I the only one that this makes nuts??? Why would someone add a letter that doesn't have to be there? Not that I am a genius, but I have always been A-OK at spelling and vocabulary, and I have never seen this used comonly before. But now I am seeing it more and more. What's up??? It almost seems kind of pretentious to me.

Both spellings are correct. We spell it 'favorite' here but I believe it's spelled 'favourite' in the UK and Canada.

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Just like "color" and "colour", "neighbor" and "neighbour". One spelling is English and the other American. We (Americans)speak a dialect of English, with many more dialects thoughout the USA.

I prefer to use "favorite" myself. ~Lisa

When I see "our" instead of "or" in a word, I assume that it was written by a Brit. Same is true of some words that end in "ize" and you see it spelled "ise". Brittish again.

Yeah, those crazy Brits. They say "maths" instead of "math" and for some reason, they "go to hospital" instead of "go to the hospital."

I spell it favourite and I'm American. My mother was an English teacher who raised me to use the Oxford Dictionary (and King James Bible) so I tend to use the UK spellings for many words. My teachers gave up mid-way through elementary school and just let me go ahead and do it because I wasn't "wrong".

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a bit off topic but never call a fanny pack a fanny pack in England. It means something totally different.

LOL! Too funny

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That sounds more like the Arabic or Indian people here. I work for a physician who is a Brit and I have never heard him say Maths or "go to hospital".

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lol...would you care to enlighten us?

Ask. He or she has probably picked up the American usage. I have friends from the UK who use both all the time.

Here's a page from the BBC that uses "Maths":
BBC - KS2 Bitesize Revision

Here's a reference to hospital without "the" on the same BBC site:

Have you ever been in hospital? Why? Share experiences of being in hospital and how it felt.

(BBC School Radio - Collective Worship - Together)

It's a Commonwealth thing. Not just British, but mostly associated that way. I use American spellings at work, but can slip up when I'm with friends. There are some other odd spellings too, but those are less common. 'Connexion' is actually a correct spelling, and I still screw up curb/kerb, and a few other words. Dipthongs (ae instead of e, two vowels in place of one) are more common two, and compound words can vary. There are a lot of style/spelling differences.

The other possible reason is that it's a business trying to look posh. I've seen malls use 'Centre,' rather than 'Center'.

I had not thought about this possibility. My husband complains frequently about all the ads on TV using people with Brittish accents. And look at many of the reality shows. Lots of Brittish speakers on them. There also seems to be more showing up in regular TV series as well. I wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't complained, but once he did, I kept seeing and hearing them all the time.

His complaints are because he is hard of hearing and has trouble understanding what they're saying, not because of any bias, before everyone starts getting their shorts in a knot.

I had to laugh good naturedly about the OP's concern for adding letters when they were not needed.

My peeve is text messaging jargon being used ANYWHERE but where it belongs. Dropping letters is not a good idea if you want to be taken seriously

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