Conventions of (American) English

Noah Webster approached the English language as an absolutist. He taught rigid language standards, and the teachers and students who lived under his sway viewed the rules of English grammar as moral imperatives. Misspelling a word or misplacing a comma, for the schoolboy or schoolgirl of his era, was a shameful error. These attitudes carried over into people’s adult lives.
With the publication of Webster’s Third International, Noah’s puritanical regime came to an end. Linguistic scientists d…