Stuff You Should Know Short Stuff: Simple Spelling Movement
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Apr 1, 2026 English spelling gets put on trial, from Theodore Roosevelt’s mocked reform push to wild phonetic ideas that make familiar words look totally wrong. The conversation digs into why English feels so chaotic, how spelling changes naturally over time, and why fights over simpler spelling became tied to literacy, schools, and even social fears.
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Teddy Roosevelt's Spelling Reform Backfired Fast
- In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt ordered federal documents to use simplified spellings for 300 words and triggered a political backlash.
- Newspapers mocked him, including a cartoon of a dictionary knocking him out, and Congress attacked him for bypassing them.
English Spelling Chaos Created Spelling Bees
- English spelling is unusually chaotic, which helps explain why spelling bees are mostly an English-speaking phenomenon.
- Josh Clark contrasts old fish spelled F-Y-S-S-H with modern F-I-S-H to show spelling naturally simplifies over time.
Phonetic Spelling Sounds Wrong To Fluent Readers
- Simplified spelling keeps failing partly because phonetic forms can make literate people sound less intelligent, even when they are more logical.
- Charles Bryant points to phrases like I node that guy as the kind of change that triggers resistance.
