Spelling was one of my few fortes back in grade school and I always prided myself on being good at it. However like Charles said of himself my spelling skills seem to have diminished over the last few years as well. Or it's possible that I just don't care so much anymore. LOL
An interesting thing that probably many people in America don't even know about or perhaps even care is that quite often they are derided over sanctioned US spellings versus the British spelling of certain words. Often as not I'll also see the occasional rant in our local Canadian paper chiding the editor for using an American spelling for a word such as "color". The offended writer claiming that "color" is not the Canadian and hence the proper British spelling of the word "colour". The catch is though that many if not more of these rogue US spellings are the same in Canada as they are in the USA but the affected writer doesn't seem to realize that. Yes we still spell "check, as in payroll check" as cheque like the British do but we do not spell many other British words the same.. For example, aluminum/aluminium, program/programme, curb/kerb, carburetor/carburettor. I had this friendly argument one time with a coworker emigre from Britain claiming that in Canada we use the British spelling. NO I said and I'll prove it whereupon I had to dig out my 1963 grade school officially sanctioned by the Ontario Board of Education Gr. 4 speller which clearly indicated that the Canadian spelling of those words was the same as the USA spelling and also to their horror that it was not incorrect though not common to also spell words like colour, honour, favour etc. without the letter U in them. These words were asterisked to a special note in the book advising the teachers of such.
