H. L. Mencken

“ The logical superiority of American spelling is well exhibited by its persistent advance in the face of all this hostility at home and abroad. The English objection to our simplifications, as Brander Matthews once pointed out, is not wholly or even chiefly etymological; its roots lie, to borrow James Russell Lowell’s phrase, in an esthetic hatred burning “with as fierce a flame as ever did theological hatred.” There is something inordinately offensive to English purists in the very thought of taking lessons from this side of the water, particularly in the mother-tongue. ”

“ A number of spellings, nearly all American, are trembling on the brink of acceptance in both countries. Among them is rime (for rhyme) . This spelling was correct in England until about 1530, but its recent revival was of American origin. It is accepted by the Concise Oxford and by the editors of the Cambridge History of English Literature, but not by Cassell. It seldom appears in an English journal. The same may be said of grewsome. It has got a footing in both countries, but the weight of English opinion is still against it. Develop (instead of develope) has gone further in both countries. ”

“ The opposition, transcending the academic, takes on the character of the patriotic. “Any American,” said Matthews in 1892, “who chances to note the force and the fervor and the frequency of the objurgations against American spelling in the columns of the Saturday Review, for example, and of the Athenœum, may find himself wondering as to the date of the papal bull which declared the infallibility of contemporary British orthography, and as to the place where the council of the Church was held at which it was made an article of faith.” [1] But that, as I say, was in 1892. ”