Columbia Spelling Board

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The Columbia Spelling Board was a committee primarily of academics, but possibly including Mark Twain, who advocated simplified spelling of many words of etymological or philiological diverse or difficult spelling. The group primarily operated in the United States.

Simplified Spelling (or simplified spellings) was a broadbased philological reform movement, centered in part at Columbia University under the aegis of a body enshrined as the Columbia Spelling Board (CSB) during Theodore Roosevelt's presidential terms. Roosevelt gave the movement much publicity in the middle of his second term, arguably at the apex of his power, by writing a letter to the Public Printer of the United States ordering 300 or so frequently used words be published solely in the new spelling recommended by Circular number 6 of the CSB.

The President's CSB efforts were eventually partly successful, but also had generated opposing resolutions in Congress, as well as defiant Supreme Court justices coming out on the record against the bureaucratic high-handedness. The Press feasted for weeks with "punny headlines" and vyed to coin new sarcastic simplifications, until the influential Harpers Weekly complained in the headline: "THIS IS TU MUCH". The president recanted his order telling the Public Printer of the US that none of his changes should be considered permanent, telling him that if the changes do not meet with public approval, that they should be 'dropt'. This later word, indicative of the resolve by this leonine president to continue using the new spellings himself.

[edit] References

• Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris, ISBN 0-8129-6600-7, paperback pp-460-61