But in the here and now, if you want to succeed in business, knowing how to spell remains an asset. You look good. You look intelligent. You might even look like you know what you're talking about. We're referring to everyday words that Americans have to ask Google how to spell.
You see, Google--because it had nothing better to do-- recently created a list of the top How to spell. The word that eight of our 50 states most often have to ask Google how to spell is beautiful. California, Texas, Florida, both Carolinas, and several others simply cannot spell beautiful.
The spellingbee starts soon! Here is a map of America's top spelling searches for And why does Arizona struggle with patient , while New Mexico cannot spell patience? Then there's Alabama and Mississippi. The former can't cope with niece. But a select few take different spellings on opposite sides of the Atlantic. These are some of the most common discrepancies between American and British spelling with the latter often prevailing as well in Canada, Australia, and other Commonwealth nations :.
In the early years of the printing press, English spelling was much more variable than it is today. Without an agreed-upon standard to guide them, writers of the 15th—18th centuries often spelled words according to their own whim. As a result, some words developed multiple common spellings. Shakespeare also preferred center to centre ; the former word shows up ten times in his plays and the latter only once. For years, spellings such as favorite and favourite coexisted in Great Britain and throughout the English-speaking world.
The fact that they are now widely understood as regional variations is largely because of two dictionary makers: Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. In constructing it, he had made calculated decisions about which spelling variations to use.
Why are there so many differences in British and American spelling, and how did they creep in? Each word has its own unique history, but the primary mover and shaker in this transatlantic drama is the nineteenth century American lexicographer Noah Webster, he of dictionary fame.
Scragg, Webster's dictionary of is largely responsible for standardizing the accepted spelling of American English. Before , many words, such as humor or humour , defense or defence and fiber or fibre , had two acceptable spellings on both sides of the pond, because they were introduced in England via both Latin and French, which used different spellings. Webster picked his preferred forms the former ones in each example above , justifying his choices in various ways, but partly on nationalist grounds: he wanted American spelling to be distinct from, and in his opinion superior to, British spelling.
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