Imagine you work at an advertising company, and you have a client you want to impress. The client is some ritzy hotel in some heavily traveled city. So in their ad you type, “the premiere destination for fun and entertainment.”

Guess what? You just made a BIG mistake.

I mark up premier vs. premiere all the time. Most times, the error is in ads in this exact usage. They are the premiere hotel, destination, B&B, etc. Unless they are a movie or play, they’re not the premiere anything.

Common Terms Used in This Post:

Noun: a person, place, thing, or idea

Verb: an action that is performed

Adjective: a word that describes a noun

I’ve noticed people use an e on the end because they think it looks better, or maybe they are misinformed and think it’s the British or French spelling. The e on the end does not make something look more important – in fact, it may make you look dumb. It’s not a style thing or preference; they are two different words with two different meanings.

Premier (no e on the end): This is an adjective that describes something first in rank or importance, or first in time.

a. Some say the Music City Center is the premier place for meetings and events.

b. The premier hot spa draws in more than a million people annually.

Premiere (with an e on the end): This can be a noun or a verb, and is the first public viewing of something. Think of a debut of a movie or play.

a. The movie premieres next weekend.

b. We’re going to the after party once the premiere is done.

One way you can remember this is: movie ends in e, and its premiere ends in e, so there’s your correct usage. Otherwise, you probably need to use premier.

For more tips, check out our Grammar and Punctuation tricks!