Tariff and origin of goods

The eighteenth entry is o sistema harmonizado, and the Portuguese spelling is the only one there is: every verb of this shape ends in -izar, so harmonizar, autorizar and normalizar raise no question at all. English makes the writer choose. Most British publishing prefers « harmonise », « organise » and « recognise » with an s, while Oxford and much of science keep the z, and American usage has only the z. Nothing of meaning hangs on it. What does matter is that the choice is not free everywhere, because a second group of verbs can never take a z: their ending is not the Greek one but a stray -ise that came in through French, and « advise », « supervise », « revise », « exercise », « comprise », « surprise » and « televise » are simply wrong the moment somebody tidies them. The -yse group does not move either — « analyse » and « paralyse » stay as they are. And this entry is where the rule bites, since the convention behind it is called the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, with a z, whoever is reading it.