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If one subscribes to linguistic proscriptivism, which means "The right way to spell it is the way which experts, such as dictionary writers, have annointed as b
by patio11 14y ago
If one subscribes to linguistic proscriptivism, which means "The right way to spell it is the way which experts, such as dictionary writers, have annointed as being correct", the one-L variant is a correct way to spell it for an American. It will appear as a variant in most modern US dictionaries.
If one subscribes to linguistic descriptionism, which means "The right way to spell it is the way that people spell it and expect to read it", people do indeed frequently spell it with one L.
- drostie 14y agoOf course, "annointed" is unjustifiable by either standard and is Simply Wrong. :P Firefox shows "cancelation" as a typo in both their UK and US dictionaries, although it appears in /usr/share/dict for both american-english and british-english on Ubuntu. Curious. I would have indeed natively spelled it with two L's.
- gwillen 14y agoAs an american I spell cancellation with two L's; but I tend to use british spellings for a lot of these (travelling etc.)