[Ads-l] Word/Phrase: cancel, cancel culture, cancellation culture

[Bwh031451]

What I’m wondering is: When did Americans start putting two ells in “canceled” and “canceling”?  I am well aware that two ells are preferred in British spellings, and that “cancellation” with two ells has been long preferred on both sides of the pond; for some reason Americans seem to be adopting British practice for the other forms as well.

I can’t tell you how many times I have looked up home pages of people who post on Facebook, wondering they are Canadian, Indian or Australian, only to find they are Americans who just use the spellings favoured (sic) elsewhere.  

I expect they will soon start wasting ells on “levelled/levelling”, “bevelled/bevelling“, “travelled/travelling”, “pencilled/pencilling”, “parcelled/parcelling”, 
“carolled/carolling”,”devilled/devilling”, “cavilled/cavilling”  et al. as well? 

note: or maybe they already have—in the above list, Apple spell-chequer (sarcasm) did NOT flag bevelled, travelled, pencilled, or pencilling as misspelled.

Why not change them all at once and be done with the dirty business? (Sarcasm: And switch all our -ize suffixes to -ise, and our favorite, honorable colors to “favourite honourable colours”? All those spare Us have been piling up, unUsed, for centuries.)

Basically, my question is: Is there any point anymore to knowing the difference between AmE and BrE spellings? 


Brian Hitchcock
At Large
Email:  bwh031451 at gmail.com

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org