what's the best spelling?

**Paul Henry** · 19th February 07, 04:41 AM

Of course spelling is very important, but we should remember that the spelling of many words in English can be different, and in the 18th Century there was no absolute "right" spelling of many words, and people like Johnson compiled his Dictionary which was very useful in trying to suggest coherent spelling.
To further complicate matters, words from foreign tongues are often represented in some form of phonetics, and they vary. We usually accept the most used form, as the standard.
And as a humourous(?) aside..... Noah Webster did do a lot of work of trying to sort out spelling in the US, not that we Brits think that succeeded!!