The Associated Press reported it on August 24, 1906: “President Roosevelt has endorsed the Carnegie spelling reform movement. Not only did he appoint Public Printer Stillings, but he gave him an order that brought him into the limelight. The person most responsible for bringing a spotlight of publicity to the Government Printing Office was President Theodore Roosevelt. The President withdrew his spelling edict and admitted defeat in this “undignified contest.” In the end, the Supreme Court refused to follow the President, as did the House of Representatives, which voted 142-24 to overturn T.R.’s order. “Could any other ruler on earth do this thing?” “Here is the language of 80 million people suddenly altered by a mere administrative ukase,” marveled an English paper. The Baltimore Sun asked how the President’s surname would be rendered in the new spelling: “Rusevelt” or “Butt-in-sky”? In best conspiracy-sniffing fashion, the Rochester Post-Express declared, “ It is a scheme financed by Carnegie, backed by certain large publishing interests, and designed to carry out an immense project for jobbery in reprinting dictionaries and school books.” Abroad, observers wondered just what had happened to the unruly and libertarian Americans. The press heaped ridicule upon the Rough Rider, who had a self-deprecating sense of humor but did not much like to be deprecated by others.

It may have been the worst miscalculation of T.R.’s career. His order was not “far-reaching or sudden or violent,” averred Roosevelt, but only a modest effort “to make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic.” … in August 1906, with characteristic impulsiveness, President Roosevelt directed the Government Printing Office to adopt simplified spelling in all publications of the executive department. WE SHARE THESE PIECES AS EXHIBITS OF THINKING ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CODE AND READING RELATED PROBLEMS.įrom boyhood, Theodore Roosevelt had been a notoriously bad speller so as President he simply rewrote the rules of orthography-until a swarm of spelling bees stung him back to his senses. NOTE: THE CHILDREN OF THE CODE PROJECT IS NOT ADVOCATING ALPHABET OR SPELLING REFORM.

President theodore roosevelt