In the same way I
would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different
to."
As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on
the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long
list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York
Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to
me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man;
she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The
grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to
the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"
Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not
separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be,"
not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.
I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of
spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational
human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in
"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The
baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging
to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews'
_Americanisms and Briticisms_.
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