Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we’re saving the English language sixty seconds at a time! I’m Lauren Smyth, and this poem mysteriously turned up on the back of my economics quiz:

So here is the rule we favor

Write up as a poem to savor

Remember this news

Only sheep need ewes

They surely have no place in labor.

This is Dr. Steele’s Spelling Minute. It’s the best test feedback I’ve ever gotten. It’s also absolutely correct because in the United States, “labor” should be spelled without a “u” which … was … not how I had spelled it. The other spelling, labour, is the British version. For a long time, these spellings were interchangeably used in English-language works. But as the United States started solidifying its break from the mother country, we decided to modernize and standardize our spelling. Thus, we dropped the u on words like honor, color, and—of course—labor.

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