Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Blame Webster.

Webster's 1828 dictionary featured only -or and is generally given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the United States.

American and British English spelling differences - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I attended schools here in America - in Chicago. But, since I cut more school than I attended, I am mostly self-taught and I, too, tend to use English spellings for words like colour and rumour. But that's mostly because I became more familiar (and thus more comfortable with archaic poetic spellings than I did with American words.

Gainzo

Thanks MrsP.

It seems that Noah Webster was the man behind the changes. Even though he seemed like a cranky old man and his changes weren't excepted until after he died, the changes stuck here. Very interesting stuff.

State

Confucius: This is why I call a "corrections officer" but the more appropriate "guard."

"Sanitation worker"? Don't get me started.

STFarmy

I have to agree with the original OP, though not necessarily with the sexist angle. I just know that it IS grammatically incorrect to use "their" when referring to a singular subject. Yep, it's completely nitpicky. But I do publishing production and proofreading for a living, so it's hard to get out of that mode.

I will say that political correctness has affected language as of late, but I've never personally felt super affected by it in the publishing world (and I loathe political correctness). In fact, a lot of times, it's more accurate. Take for example Indian vs. Native American. Indian is technically wrong; the people here aren't Indian. At all. They are, however, the peoples who were native to America. So, viola. No joke, I had an author once lecture me that I was being a vile agent of political correctness and polluting our language because I had changed all of his references from Indian to Native American (as per the style of my company at the time). He blatantly told me that "natives" is incorrect because that only refers to "people from Africa." Yeah, that was one of the best laughs I've ever had.

Off-topic I suppose, just thought I'd throw in my two cents and have a laugh at that moron's expense.