Noah Webster and Politics are to Blame!

/ May 7, 2014

When I came up with Travelling Crone as the name for this blog I just went to wordpress and plopped in the name with 2 LLs and all was fine. But when I was writing an email tell a friend about it, spell check didn’t like the 2 LLs. OHMYGAWD!(yeah yeah most people would have used spell check first but at the time that would have been akin to checking the word ‘crone’) In a fit, I created my email using 1 L and fretted on how I was going to change the wordpress name. THEN I checked it somewhere else and it said the 2 LLs were correct. (insert head pounding on desk). Of all the challenges I foresaw in writing a travel blog, never saw this one coming – controversy on how its name was spelt. So in a quandry, I left everything as was and figured I had my bases covered.

Then this morning I came across a post on FB about why some english words are spelt differently, depending on where you are from, by my geeky friends at www.quickanddirtytips.com/, a spelling and grammar site. Intrigued, I popped over to check it out. Well it was worth the effort and about 1/2 down there it was – travelling/traveling. It was that bugger Noah Webster’s fault! In an effort to symbolically separate the U.S. from Britain he started spelling words differently. The result is that Canadians get into these silly conflicts with spell check and American friends. Zee/zed, check/cheque and yes, travelling/travel. Who knew?

So now I am stuck with both spellings but I definitely prefer the 2 LLs, it looks more elegant and lets face it, the Crone is all about the elegant. :).

Do go check out the article, it will enlighten and amuse you. “Why We Have Both “Color” and “Colour”“. Thank you Grammar Girl for shedding light on this, now at least I have an interesting story when I need to explain the discrepancy between my blog and my email. yah.

 

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13 thoughts on “Noah Webster and Politics are to Blame!”

  6. Thanks Crone, that was interesting. I’ve always wondered about that. 😀 In New Zealand we use British spelling, but a lot of the internet uses American spelling, so we have to be versatile. Also, a lot of computers and phones use American dictionaries, so I’m frequently argueing with Spellcheck (or should that be Spelcheck?). 😀

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