It has to do with standardized spelling. Sometime in the 19th century, people decided that spelling ought to be standardized (before that you could pretty much spell however you wanted). Over here I think it was Noah Webster who first published a comprehensive, standardized dictionary, and tried to simplify the spelling of a lot of words. I don't know who did that in Britain (Dr. Johnson maybe?) but somehow we ended up with different standards.chrissifniotis wrote:why is it that a number of words are spelt differently in America and American held territories?
What do you mean about the counting system? Are you talking about how in British English a "billion" means 1,000,000,000,000?