Words color, honor: American English vs. British English

[Laroche]

Hi all,

I'm studying for the GRE exams.

My questions:

1. When writing any text during the exam and i have to write such words as color; honor (American English) or any other related word, will i be penalised if i write them in the British English version as colour ; honour?

2. When writing a sentence in English language, sometimes i run into confusion on how i use my "i". I know i have to put it in the capital form when it starts any sentence, but what about when it is inbetween a sentence?
Consider the following sentences for example:
(i) The reason why i went to school;
(ii) The reason why I went to school.
Which one of them is correct?

3. This is a sentence i read in the Peterson's GRE Cat Success textbook 2002 edition, page 249, 3rd to the last line (incase anyone cares to make reference):
...choose a statement that either weakens a given fact or disputes an HA and in consequence makes the conclusion illogical.
Now my question is this:
It confuses me why we have an HA in the sentence rather than a HA. I supposed that the only time the word "an" precedes any other word is if such word starts with any of the following letters a,e,i,o,u.

Please note that HA in my third question is an acronym for Hidden Assumption.

[Cooliegirly]

First of all, You don't have to use American spelling for the GRE exam. It's pretty much irrelevant which spelling system you choose. However, if you are going to take a test that's going to be graded by British English users, it's better to use the British spelling. Second of all, "I" has to be capitalized at all time.

[Jamie (K)]

The English pronoun I is always capitalized, no matter where it appears in a sentence.

Graders of American standardized exams don't care whether you use US, Canadian or British spelling. It's all English to us. On the Cambridge proficiency exams (First Certificate, etc.), the policy is that you can use British or American spelling, but you have to be consistent.

The article an is used before "HA" in that text because "H" begins with a vowel sound when it is pronounced. It's similar to why we say "a university". The first letter in "university" is U, but the first sound in "university" is the consonant sound [y].