Why do Americans spell colour without the "u"?
554033
First of all, it has nothing to do with laziness nor even "efficiency"!  It was a conscious, reasoned decision.\n\nThis particular change in spelling is one of the reforms in American spelling suggested by the early American teacher NOAH Webster (NOT the politician Daniel Webster!)  It is found in the dictionary he published in 1826.\n\nWebster actually suggested many spelling reforms, and only some of them ended up being accepted.  Changing -our endings to -or was one of these.\nFor a list see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform#Successes_in_spelling_simplification\ncompare:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences\n\n\nThe u, of course, does not affect the pronunciation at all.  That was Webster's reason for omitting it.  In fact, the u in most if not all of the -our words is derived from French  (forms ending in -eur, e.g., honneur, valeur) or were influened by Norman forms.   Thus these are MIDDLE English words (after the Norman Conquest) and not OLD English.     But note that the Latin ORIGINAL of "colour" is, in fact, "color".    Not such a crazy innovation!\nhttp://www.thefreedictionary.com/color\n\nIn fact, I believe SOME of his changes were accepted by the British (perhaps at other's suggestion not his own), e.g., "music" instead of the older "musick". Incidentally, one important thing to keep in mind in all of this spelling discussion is that when Webster began his work in the late 18th century there was no real "standard English spelling" on EITHER side of the Atlantic!  (Just read the unedited versions of writings from this period.)   So some of Webster's work was simply trying to bring some standards to an almost "anything goes" situation... all the more understandable since his MAIN concern was as a TEACHER providing materials for students in American elementary schools.   His first works, before the dictionary, were a grammar a reader and a spelling book -- all teaching tools.   So changing the spelling of some words to better match how they were pronounced by his day was a reasonable part of his overall program.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Speller_and_Dictionary
1033377
Because you can't spell it.
373116
They have a keyboard with various "strokes."  Once entering the appropriate strokes for a symbol, it combines them into one.  I'm to understand it's a bit annoying to use.
852243
Could it be that they're using Eng (US) rather than Eng (UK)?  Being a Brit, I'd write "misspelt" rather than "misspelled" - but this wouldn't be incorrect.  I think we all have our favourite (favorite?) hates in written English, but we mustn't let this affect our blood pressure!
217313
because they spell "why" with a "Y"!!!
311148
There a historical reasons for the spelling.  For example, "hour" is spelled with an "h" because it comes from French "heure" and was never pronounced in English.  But other silent letters aren't really silent at all.  For example, take "race" and "rack".  Both could be spelled "rac", but then you would not know whether the "c" was pronounced like the "c" in "cat" or the "c" in "city".  The "e" in "race" says "pronounce the 'c' like an 's'", while the "k" in "rack" says "pronounce the 'c' like a 'k'" (the "k" is the silent letter in "rack").  So don't disparage the "silent letters".  They aren't really "silent" at all, but give us important information about how to pronounce the other letters in the word.
169671
It was something that was picked by the television media here in the US during the last few natioanl elections. If you go back a number of years ago it was the opposite on TV.\nNow that the phrases "red states" and "blue states" have become a part of our vocabluary I doubt we'll see the colors change again any time soon.
872284
Cool observation, if it's your own.\n\nIt's probably because the letter "e" is just, in general, more common than the letter "a".  It's used more.
335575
Because double letters are used for plurals in abreviations. For example, page is "p." while pages is "pp.". So Estados Unidos is "EE.UU."
1110571
There is 2 ways to spell it. In the US, we spell it color. In England, they spell it colour. It is the description you give to an object in terms of how it looks. Color or colour (see spelling differences) is the perception of the frequency (or wavelength) of light, and can be compared to how pitch (or a musical note) is the perception of the frequency or wavelength of sound.
349135
it's actually very simple- it is in fact based on the removal of vowels to shorten the material being written.\n\n example:\nits actlly vry smpl- n fct bsd on rmvl o vwls 2 shrtn mtrl bng wrtn
100658
Good question.  It's because of the consonant sound that the vowel "u" makes in both words ("yu", consonant sound of "y-").  You already know the rule for articles that preceed a word - use "a" if the word starts with a consonant (or consonant sound), and "an" if the following word begins with a vowel or womel sound.\n\nThat's why.  English is bizarre.
113924
Color is spelled "Colour" in India. Schedule is pronounced "shedule" in India.  Your instinct is probably correct.  I have noted a large Indian presence here, although I have also noted a number of Australians, Canadians, Irish, and Scottish, any of whom might use the British spellings of words Americans end with "-or."
617577
Rather than Morse code (which, as you say, is the letter U), I think it might come from WRITING something and finishing it with :- (or maybe two periods, points or full-stops and a dash - maybe a slanting one) to indicate "That's the end of it - no more discussion!"
395684
You can write the lowercase w with hard corners - that's not why it's called a double-u.\n\nThe alphabet as we know it goes back to ancient latin alphabet.  The letter they called U was written as a V, long before we had a "V."  The W was originally written as "VV" as opposed to it's own letter.  This combination was added in late Latin times to represent a Germanic sound the Romans didn't use.  Later, in the middle ages, the letter U was added as a distictly different sound from the V, and the W became it's own letter, retaining it's naming from what people were used to using to refer to the VV sound.
912900
We use the Latin alphabet.
716986
My typing teacher told us that everyone has some combination of letters they will always mess up, for some reason.  For myself, it's always the T and the H ... so my "the" looks like "hte".  It's apparently normal.