The first four years of my working life were spent with a US TV network. My language began unraveling (US), or unravelling (UK). My estuary drawl was peppered with the argot so memorably deployed by Alicia Silverstone in Clueless.* British friends laughed – at me, rather than with me. Then a spell at ITN made me spell ‘center’ the way I’d been raised to spell it.

Today, online, I’m increasingly quoting blogs, stories and sources that are written not in British, but in US English. As British news organizations (organisations?) compete for eyeballs in the United States shouldn’t they pay their potential audience the courtesy of communicating in American English?

So isn’t it time we gave up on the idiosyncracies of British English and threw in our lot with Webster’s dictionary? Educational qualifications like the ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language’ are set up to measure American English. Increasingly it feels like a provincial barrier. And if the Canadians can get over it, are we really going to lose our national identity spelling ‘honor’ without a ‘u’? Let’s be honest, we’re saving on ‘u’s – there must be an environmental benefit too!

I’m not denying Britain’s wonderful historic contribution to English. But we’re integrating text now every time we exchange emails, and it’s happening faster than ever seemed possible. Think, too, of what we have to offer in exchange, like the contribution of new and exotic words like ‘wanker,’ which seems to have gained in popularity in the US over the past decade.

Who’s up for joining in on ‘centers’ and ‘theaters,’ and throwing off the shackles of our redundant lexicon? Don’t all shout at once.

*Source of great journalism quote from Silverstone’s character (after watching a Tim Willcox piece on CNN): Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there’s no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value.