Teddy’s Spelling Reform
Tags:
Alright, so much for the obsession with ChildrenOfTheCode. But … just this one more story, about which I don’t have much to say. Just read here.
From boyhood, Theodore Roosevelt had been a notoriously bad speller; so as President he simply rewrote the rules of orthography—until a swarm of spelling bees stung him back to his senses.
… in August 1906, with characteristic impulsiveness, President Roosevelt directed the Government Printing Office to adopt simplified spelling in all publications of the executive department. His order was not “far-reaching or sudden or violent,” averred Roosevelt, but only a modest effort “to make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic.”
It may have been the worst miscalculation of T.R.’s career.