One of the biggest debates in Satoshi Nakamoto lore is whether or not Satoshi was American. Those that doubt it point to his somewhat frequent use of British/Canadian spellings. Americans unaccustomed to British spellings might feel that it would be tough for an American to start writing that way even if the person was really smart and even if they were doing so for operational security. It’s easier to suppose that the author is just more likely to be a native British speaker or that there were at least two Satoshis, one American, one British, hence a split.
However, there is and was zero skill required to type in British English in 2009 for the average American. That’s because anyone could set their device’s language settings to the English standard they wanted and just turned on auto-correct. Voila, an American’s words would be auto-corrected to British spelling.
As it turns out, Jack Dorsey regularly changed the language settings of at least one device in 2009, which means the likelihood of him activating UK English to play Satoshi is pretty high.
A night in Paris! Switching my iPhone language to French (helped my Spanish immensely while in Spain).
— jack (@jack) April 4, 2009
Satoshi’s use of British English is likely overthought as his idioms were almost exclusively American, he had an IP doxxed to California, and his working hours were typically Western Hemisphere-based. Satoshi need not have been a mastermind that was constantly thinking about which words to translate to an alternate spelling. he just had to change the keyboard setting. Very simple.