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Why do Americans often write ''night'' as ''nite''?
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Poor quality schooling?
Actually, I don't think that an American would write 'nite' for 'night' in any 'official'
sense. At least, I hope not.
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It's one of those trendy spellings you'll sometimes see in advertisements or on the
Internet.
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It's not used formally. I never spell night as 'nite.' People sometimes write it
that way to sound "cute" or to use it in marketing. The classic TV channel "Nick
at Nite" for example, but it just looks trendier to say Nite in that case, plus it
has four letters like Nick, so it goes better than, say, Nick at Night. See, it just
doesn't look as good!
But no, it's not the common way we spell it in the United States, so it's not some
odd American way of doing things. I would chalk it up to the same reason instead
of "drive-through" we use "Drive-Thru" and "donut" instead of "doughnut" The official
spelling is what you know it as, don't worry. ;-)
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I don't think that most people don't know how to spell "night" properly. What I noticed
is that "thru", "donut" and possibly also "nite" are attempts to approximate spelling
to colloquial pronunciation, for commercial ends or otherwise. It is kind of a "spelling
game", one may say. After all, an attempt to "rationalise" spelling was made by Webster
in the 19th centutry, and that is how Americans came to spell "endeavor" instead
of "endeavour", "parlor" instead of "parlor", etc. This kind of simplified spelling
is regularly used in chatrooms, where it can pass for a type of shorthand. The problem
begins when children start to get confused by it, and start using it in their school
essays, for example. So over-use is not recommended, the only place where I find
this type of "trendy" spelling justified is chatrooms.
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I don't think you should get too wound up about it. Do that when mobile/cell phone
text style writing takes over. It already has in some quarters.
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One time a friend of mine asked me to review an answer he had in driver's ed. Now,
driver's ed isn't a class that requires mastery of the pen.
Anyway, I look at the sentence for the answer and he wrote "U would make a right
turn on red only when u see 2 it that it is clr"
I found it funny and sad at the same time.
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