How British and American Spelling Parted Ways

When you set up your spellcheck on your computer, you must choose between British and American English, because even in text, they are becoming different languages. Why do Americans spell words differently from the British? While it was the British who altered their accent to end up sounding different from Americans, in the case of spelling, it was the Americans who changed.

(YouTube link)

Arika Orent explains how that happened. Simple is the name of the game. Now if we could just get global internet commenters to stop correcting each other’s spelling when those spellings are perfectly fine in their native countries, we’d be ahead of the game. We have enough problems remembering that chips, flat, biscuit, bonnet and boot mean fries, apartment, cookie, hood and trunk