Here's something that rankles me whenever I'm knocking out words on the computer. It's that little wiggly red line that appears as you type, you know the one, it shows up underneath words that are, ahem, miss-spelled. Like colour for example, or organised, or the double whammy - colourisation.
Now i am fully aware of the fact that this is so-called US English and I could just change the dictionary settings to International English, but you got to admit it's annoying having to change all the defaults to get things to work right (don't get me started on US letter paper size).
Aside from the fact that the United States has to have every thing different, roads, tv systems, electricity, weight scales, weight in general, there's something about the particular misspellings that seems a little more sinister. In the majority of cases there's two letters that get cut.
Think about:
* colour - color
* organise - organize
* colourisation - colorization
* prioritise - prioritize
* alphabetise - alphabetize
* humour - humor
What's the deal with U and S. US. The United States cut out all the Us and Ss from regular usage whenever possible. Why on earth would they? you'd think they'd be aware of the existence of the two letters, presumably have a bit of a soft spot for them even.
Could it be they only brought a limited number of letters on the Mayflower and after the Boston tea party they figured they couldn't get any more from old blighty and had better conserve those Us and Ss for all the official-type stuff later on. God forbid that the US?Ǭ? Marshalls or the US House of Representatives or even the POTUS would have to ration out their acronym usage down the track.
Was it due to some typographical drought in the 1800s when Os and Zs blew across the prairies like tumbleweed but Us and Ss had to be rationed for the greater good.
Perhaps after the War of Independence they got a bit cocky and started throwing Us and Ss around willy-nilly until some pessimistic environmentalist pointed to the example of Easter Island and the ominous portent of resource depletion.
Is there a secret typographic vault next to the gold at Fort Knox where they keep an emergency supply in case of nuclear war. Like Noah's Ark except instead of species there's a U and an S in every font. Unfortunately, after the big one, the only words left to spell would be
US and SUS.
Other countries don't do it. The UK hasn't introduced foch into the language to save on Us and Ks (although there was that weird minding Ps and Qs thing). The EU hasn't changed the spelling of the continent to Yorop. It is possible that the collapse of the Soviet Union was actually
due to the inability of Stalin's five year plans to produce a requisite amount of Us, Ss or Rs thereby severely hampering the states ability to deliver critical press releases, but it's unlikely.
Someone needs to alert the yanks to the fact that times have changed. We're in the digital age, and you know what that means - infinite letters - that's right, all the Us and Ss you want. You don't even have to bomb anyone to get at them. Just try this. Type an S, hit ctrl-c to copy, hit ctrl-v to paste and repeat. Forever. That's right forever. Try it if you're not sure, the Us and Ss will never run out, they don't even get faded or diluted or worn out at all.
On second thoughts, lets not let the cat out of the bag, might be just what the economy needs, an export boom in letters. If we're lucky we might just fix up the current account deficit for all those wiggly red lines we've been importing for so long.