The writer explains the imitation of English orthography with two impulses: 1) the colonial desire to "pass as English" and 2) the American publishers' desire to find a workable spelling compromise between the two countries. Before copyright laws and the treaty between America and England, the British feared an infiltration of American-printed books and periodicals and the subsequent "corruption of English spelling." The fear was assuaged, however, as the English publishers held to a conservatism and forced Americans to compromise.
The challenges of developing their own orthography and imitating their English counterparts are apparent in Mencken's examples. For instance, the.....
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