WWAJD? or spelling made simple

WWAJD? or WWOHD? What would Andrew Jackson do? Always a good way to guide one's life. Except perhaps in matters of Indian affairs, bigamy and settlements of personal disputes.

But Ol' Hickory had his own wisdom, that's for sure.


I once had a very annoying, anti-American colleague who went on and on and (effing on) about the superiority of the English language to the American language. Dumbass. Are you so attached to those superfluous Us? Do you really care if I say toMAYto? Let's please call the whole thing off, I said.

He would neither cease nor desist. I thought of filing a complaint of racist bullying, but couldn't be bothered with the paperwork. So I said to myself WWAJD? And since I'm not in possession of a pair of carefully crafted, mother of pearl inlaid dueling pistols, I dragged out this quotation.

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."

And that did it. (Image of AJ's dueling pistols from the fabulous image blog - Shorpy).

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Mel has an interesting post about spelling simplification. Which attracts some interesting comments. That I couldn't be bothered with, because the spelling was impenetrable. See:

The unpredictability of ireggular spelling makes lerning to reed and rite unecessarily difficult for menny lerners. Because of repeeted lak of success in thare riting menny kids just giv up.

English societys worldwide hav a 20% plus illitracy rate. Is this what u and your commentators (amung the lucky ones who hav coped with English spelling) reely want?

Argggh... What the hell are you saying?

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Living in England for over a decade has altered my spelling. I do try to keep my spellings separate - American for American audiences, British for British audiences. I rarely manage this. At work, I do my dead level best to spell in a British way. I'm paid from the public pound, writing about English affairs for an almost exclusively British audience. As an immigrant, I feel it's the least I can do. Thank goodness for spell check - just have to make sure the dang thing's on Brit spelling as MS Word has an unfortunate tendency to autonomously switch to American spelling and make me look an arrogant language imperialist.

On this blog, regular readers will have noted, that my spelling is all mixed up and I'll switch back and forth within the same post. I am a poor proofer and I swear trying to spell two ways has made me a far poorer speller overall. I hope no one minds too much.

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There are a number of online communities for pregnant women and new moms/mums. I used one that had both American and British online spaces. It's been a really interesting experience seeing what people got worked up about on different sides of the ponds. But most interesting of all has been the quality of the posts.

Somewhat surprisingly, British posters overall have far poorer language and spelling skills. Truly appalling. Not the occasional typo or easily misspelled word. But a clear failure to master the bottom line basics of English spelling - particularly around homophones. You know...their/there/they're - that kind of thing. I don't know if this represents a clear failure of the British educational system*, a different section of society posting in the UK v. America, or maybe clear evidence in support of the spelling simplification society. After all, those superfluous Us must have a greater effect on:

The unpredictability of ireggular spelling makes lerning to reed and rite unecessarily difficult for menny lerners.

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*I truly suspect this one - see All Must Have Prizes by Melanie Phillips