Webster went on to remark that "a national language is a band of national union" and that "every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national." In his estimation, what was holding Americans back was "an astonishing respect for the arts and literature of their parent country, and a blind imitation of its manners." To combat this unfortunate state of affairs, spelling would be his weapon of choice. And yes, he hoped his proposal would make spelling more regular. But that, it seems from the surrounding arguments, was a secondary consideration to asserting an American national identity.

Whatever the motivation, others were not so quick to agree that English was in any need of change, dire or not. Both linguists and academics opposed the reforms, arguing that an arbitrary alteration of spelling would destroy precious etymology and introduce unnecessary artificiality into the language's linguistic development. (How ironic, then, that these very same changes, or at least those that survived, are now supported with equal vehemence.) And so, the result was an incomplete, and often inconsistent, adoption of select measures--measures that today mark what we now consider standard differences between British and American spelling: The change of -our into -or (colour versus color, away from the French-derived Middle English spelling and more in line with pronunciation), of -re to -er (centre versus center--likewise a move away from French derivation), -ise to -ize (realise versus realize), -yse to -yze (analyse versus analyze), -ogue to -og (dialogue versus dialog), -ence to -ense (defence versus defense), and so on.

But if that were the whole story, there wouldn't be much to it. It's easy enough to learn one spelling in one country, one in another, and be done with it. As linguist Geoff Pullum observes, he little minds switching from one standard to the other depending on the target audience. "Spelling," he says, "is not an area in which your ordinary human freedoms should be allowed free rein; there are no human rights appeals against the facts of spelling." He's happy enough to be grey in one country and gray in the other; that's their prerogative, not his.

Fair enough. And if only more people would subscribe to the same doctrine, all would be (relatively) well. But alas, that is not the tone that has prevailed in the popular discourse. Instead, Webster's nationalistic swagger was just the first in a series of reform movements to bully the English language into a semblance of order--whatever the reformer in question considered the order to be.

There was Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet, and George Bernard Shaw's indictment of English inconsistencies--though he never did suggest that fish be spelled as ghoti for all the sense of spelling rules, as good a story as it would make had he done so, he did argue that "if we do not spell words as they are pronounced, our readers will pronounce words as they are spelt, so that in the end we shall have a change in the English spoken language which is in no way desirable." There were Theodore Roosevelt's spelling reforms and the creation of the Simplified Spelling Board and American Phonetic Alphabet. Time and time again, various authorities have done the exact opposite of what Pullman suggests: They've tried to assert their own vision of the language instead of conforming to prevailing norms. And they've done so with little authority behind them save that of their own making.