I've not been able to access the site for the last few days - its keep giving a "server not available 404(?)" message but judging from all your postings it looks like I'm the only one - I suspect a gremlin at my ISP is blocking my access, moan, moan ...

In the meatime, I spotted this BBC article which claims that scientists have taken a tit-for-tat approach in deciding that British scientists will write "sulfur" not "sulphur" if American scientists write "aluminium" not "aluminum". I assume that this is the origin of your orignal posting.http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/newsid_1039000/1039050.stm

Are there some secret talks going on where people are trading in spellings - if so, I'd love to be a fly on the wall. If they were unable to reach a decision (like the recently abandoned talks on global warming http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1041000/1041030.stm), they could play poker or even e-bay style on line trading.