The "just so" story that I've heard is that post-colonial Americans have dropped the "u" from "-our" words for two reasons: efficiency, and to set them apart fr

The "just so" story that I've heard is that post-colonial Americans have dropped the "u" from "-our" words for two reasons: efficiency, and to set them apart from the English. I was also under the impression that the "efficiency" argument was at least partially influenced by Thomas Jefferson. I just did a brief search and I wasn't able to find reference to this online, but from my visits to his home at Monticello I recall that he had a unique style of writing - for instance, he tended not to use capital letters in his personal notes. He seems like exactly the kind of person who would have been vocally in favor of dropping unvocalized letters from words.