I'm trying to figure out if there is a specific rule behind the word "cancel" that would cause "cancellation" to have two L's, but "canceled" and "canceling" to have only one (in the US).
I understand the rules are very loose when it comes to double L's in English, and I have read several posts on here talking about "canceled" and "canceling" (vs "cancelled" and "cancelling"), but my specific question is more about the spelling of "cancellation".
- US English Oxford Dictionary – they do NOT mention cancelation with one "L"
- Meriam Webster – they do seem to have cancelation listed with one "L"
- Microsoft Word marks "cancelation" as an invalid word
- Same with the spell checker in Firefox
So my question is: is there a reason or rule why in US English, "cancellation" seems to have two L's (to most dictionaries), while "canceled" and "canceling" does not?
Best Answer
These words were all originally spelled with two l's (in British English, which is why the English Oxford dictionary will not recognize the single-L spelling).
Webster was one of the first to publish Americanized (more phonetic) spellings in his dictionary in the late 1800s (which is why you did find it in the Webster dictionary).
An American committee for simplified spelling published the Handbook of Simplified Spelling to record these changes in the early 1900s. One of the rules dictated that VERBS with double consonants, preceded by short vowels would drop their second consonant. Since cancellation is not a verb, the rule did not apply.