Comment by somat
5 hours ago
Or Andrew Jackson approaching the problem from the other end.
“It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.”
As a rather, well... "creative" speller I blame Webster for locking things down and ruining it for the rest of us.
I few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."
The tricky part is that spoken language and written language are not the same. Even if you are a descriptionist that believes dictionaries should represent how people write, it doesn't necessarily mean that the spelling changes based on how people pronounce it.
That's actually how many of the dictionary people see themselves.
That is in fact what the dictionary is supposed to do.
Also known as descriptivism. That's what it do.
A natural descriptivist.