Why Americans and Brits Spell Words Differently
Why do British people write "colour" with a U, while Americans write "color" without it? And why does "travelled" have two L's in the UK, but "traveled" has just one L in America?
A Facebook meme first shared in 2018 claimed to have the answer: it said American newspaper ads used to charge by the letter, so advertisers would remove letters to save money.
But according to the fact-checkers at Snopes, there's no evidence US newspapers ever charged advertisers by the letter. The earliest American newspapers charged ads by how much space they used, and later by the number of lines or the number of words — not the number of letters.
The truth is that US spelling is different because of one man: Noah Webster, who wrote and published the first American dictionary in 1806.
Webster wanted to create an American version of written English that was separate from the British version — just as America had declared itself a separate country from Britain in 1776.
As early as 1789, Webster wrote that the new nation should "establish a national language, as well as a national government." And even before he published his dictionary, he published a spelling textbook used to teach reading and writing.
Webster argued that Americans should "simplify" their spelling by doing things like removing silent and double letters, or changing a soft C to an S — making "defence" into "defense," for example.
He believed this would make American English easier to learn and encourage standardized speech and spelling. It would also help American publishers — because every British book would have to be reprinted for American readers, and British textbooks could no longer be used in schools.
Not all of Webster's changes stuck — he wanted to spell "soup" as "soop," for example, and change "women" to "wimmin." But enough were adopted that Webster's effect on American English can still be seen today. And Merriam-Webster dictionaries still carry his name.
