EuroBillTracker wrote:
I think it's more complicated. At some point the US decided to simplify how words were written and "thru" was such a proposal. I think it was never enacted by law or something but still, some people use it. Can anyone confirm ?
I took a look into a couple of dictionaries on the Internet and found mostly "Informal through". And this:
thru
An occasional non-standard American English spelling of through. Examples: I see the thing thru, alone-E. E. Cummings, 1917; When she wuz little and she had stuttered thru a sentence-Black World, 1971; Available for S types right thru to Mk 10s it retails for 26 notes-Hot Car , 1977. The spelling has a history of its own in the 20c. in American spelling-reform circles, but the American public has rejected it except in informal circumstances (private letters, memos, etc.) and in the traffic term thruway ( = expressway).
The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, © Oxford University Press 1968
thru (adv., adj., prep.)
is a variant spelling of through, widely written but relatively seldom printed; it was formally proposed by spelling reformers in the late nineteenth century as a simplification, and like tho has rarely been questioned seriously in Informal use. See SPELLING (1). 1
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press.
