Nite

Why do Americans often write ''night'' as ''nite''?

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.

It's one of those trendy spellings you'll sometimes see in advertisements or on the Internet.

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. ;-)

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.

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.

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.