I'm cheaping out, but with Hallowe'en almost upon us (yes, it has an apostrophe, damn it), I figure I can't gripe about this enough. I don't know when I became such a snob, but I presume it's been a long time coming. As previously posted in my livejournal: my complaint about spellings.

I spell Hallowe'en with that little do-hicky called an apostrophe. That was how they taught me to spell it in school. Like co-operate with an hyphen. Two things that do not happen in regular English spelling anymore.

WHY NOT?

Hallowe'en - a contraction of (All) Hallow Even(ing).
Co-operate without the hyphen should be pronounced COOP (like chickens) and that is still how my brain reads it.

Who told people to stop doing it? Was it just collective laziness on the part of spellers? Is there a Language Institute (like the org that sets the colour trend standards three years in advance) that makes language changes and subtly folds them into our usage without our knowing?

Witchology.com (who comes up with names like that?), which was the first hit when I googled "hallowe'en spelling" says the UK spelling uses the apostrophe, so my question is... is the U next? Already I see my friends dropping it in favour (note the U, people) of the American spelling.

STOP THE MADNESS ! Please, my Canadian friends, do not give in to the lazy spellings dictated by a angry Dictionarian (Webster).

But I digress. I blame the insidiousness of shlock style-guides telling people how to write.

I was asked why I use the British S over the American Z in words like 'organise' and my answer was really quite simple: "The sound S makes when placed alone between two vowels is usually Z-like. I figure, if that's the case, I'll go with the version used by the people spelling in English longer."

Yes. I think way too much about these things.