Reply to comment about "Why Canadian spelling is different"

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Submitted by Sheila on July 24, 2019, at 8:16

Hi, Don,
Thank you for your comment. The fact is that correct spelling is merely a convention agreed upon by the speakers of a language. So if a significant community of speakers adopts a particular style of spelling, then that spelling is correct for them, regardless of what other language communities might choose to do.
But for those who place value on numbers, it’s helpful to bear in mind that those 37 million Canadians who haven’t rushed to adopt American spelling are not alone: British spelling is typically preferred by the hundreds of millions of English speakers in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.
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