Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way

Not Andrew Jackson — an anonymous 1855 newspaper joke Anonymous American newspaper humor · first printed 31 August 1855
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The line is the punch line of a comic courtroom anecdote about an unlettered country lawyer, printed in the Jamestown Journal of 31 August 1855 and reprinted that November in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Mark Twain was credited with it in 1875 and Andrew Jackson not until 1882 — thirty-seven years after Jackson’s death — and no source in Jackson’s own words has ever been found.

Last verified 7 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way” Anonymous — the punch line of a comic courtroom anecdote first printed in the Jamestown Journal (Jamestown, New York), 31 August 1855, and reprinted in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1855, p. 860. Not Andrew Jackson, who died in 1845; the earliest Jackson credit located by Quote Investigator is 1882. Source: Quote Investigator, "Quote Origin: No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way." · Verbatim: “I have no respect for a man who can spell a word only one way.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Andrew Jackson. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of creativity and doubt. Theme: "No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually comes from

Earliest known printing
Jamestown Journal (Jamestown, New York), 31 August 1855, p. 3
Excerpt below
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, “Editor’s Drawer,” November 1855, p. 860
First credited to Jackson
July 1882 — thirty-seven years after his death
Source in Jackson’s own words
None located

Some years ago the Hon. Hiram Runnels, of Wyoming, Pennsylvania, had quite a reputation as a pettifogger. His knowledge of books was very small, and his main reliance was upon his own tact and shrewdness, which rarely failed him, and lasts to this day. On one occasion he was pitted against a smart, well-dressed limb of the law from the city, who made fun of a paper which Runnels had submitted to the court. … Runnels replied: “The learned counsel on the other side finds fault with my spellin’, as though the merits of the case depended on sich outside matters. I’m agin luggin’ in any sich forin’ affairs, but I will say that a man must be a great fool who can’t spell a word more than one way.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine · November 1855

Transcribed from the scanned volume at the Internet Archive; the dialect spelling is the magazine’s own. In the earlier Jamestown Journal version, the lawyer is Hon. Nyrum Reynolds of Wyoming County, New York, and the oath is uncensored: “a man must be a d—d fool, who can’t spell a word more than one way.”

Magazine scan
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Vol. XI (1855) at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way

How we verified this

  • 31 August 1855 — the earliest instance located by Quote Investigator ↗: an anecdote in the Jamestown Journal in which the pettifogger Hon. Nyrum Reynolds of Wyoming County tells a jury that “a man must be a d—d fool, who can’t spell a word more than one way.”
  • November 1855 — the same story runs in the “Editor’s Drawer” of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, p. 860 ↗, with the lawyer renamed Hon. Hiram Runnels of Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and the oath softened to “a great fool.”
  • November 1875 — the Illinois Schoolmaster, p. 380 ↗ opens an essay on spelling drill with “Mark Twain says that he must have little genius who can’t spell a word in more than one way” — the first famous name attached to the joke.
  • July 1882 — the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, p. 273 ↗ invokes “General Jackson” for the sentiment, the earliest Jackson connection on record.

The 1855 anecdote excerpted above is comfortably in the public domain in the United States — Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for November 1855 is long out of copyright, as is the 1882 Register. The one-line modern wording credited to Andrew Jackson, however, has never been tied to any datable work of his or anyone else’s, so we assert no rights status for it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Everyone it has been pinned on

This is a floating gag, and it has been handed to a new famous name roughly every generation. None of the claimants has a source.

Andrew Jackson 1882

The earliest Jackson link Quote Investigator located is an aside in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for July 1882 ↗, p. 273: town clerks spelled their office so many ways that “evidently, like General Jackson, they despised a man who could spell a word in only one way.” Jackson had died in 1845, thirty-seven years earlier, and even this instance is a passing simile rather than a quotation of him.

Mark Twain 1875

Quote Investigator reports that the saying “has never been found in the writings or speeches of Mark Twain,” yet the November 1875 Illinois Schoolmaster ↗ opens an editorial on spelling with “Mark Twain says that he must have little genius who can’t spell a word in more than one way.” Twain was alive and famous at the time and never appears to have claimed it.

Thomas Jefferson 1983

Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia files the line as a spurious quotation ↗, giving 1983 as the earliest appearance credited to Jefferson — in Peter McWilliams’s The Word Processing Book, p. 57. Jefferson in fact told his daughter in 1783 to “take care that you never spell a word wrong.”

G. K. Chesterton and W. C. Fields

Both appear on Monticello’s list of other attributions ↗ for the same saying, alongside Jackson and Twain, with no source offered for either.

Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the remark “was created as the punch line of a fictional anecdote about spelling” and was only later reassigned to famous figures — and that the evidence for Twain or Jackson is very weak.

Context

A joke that needed a famous mouth

The remark was born as the tag line of a story, not as anyone’s opinion. In the 1855 telling a rustic but shrewd country lawyer is mocked in open court for his spelling, and wins the jury by shrugging the objection off — the humour depends on the speaker being a bit of a fool, which is exactly the flavour that later got lost when the line was handed to a president.

That handover follows a pattern quotle.info sees constantly: an unowned joke drifts toward whichever famous name makes it funniest. Mark Twain got it first, in an 1875 schoolteachers’ journal ↗, because he really did write that he never had “any large respect for good spelling.” Jackson got it later because his enemies had spent decades painting him as a man who could barely spell his own name.

Quote Investigator: “the supporting evidence for an ascription to Twain or Jackson is very weak.”

The Harvard story, and the other version you have seen

The wording most often pinned on Jackson is not the one in this page’s title but “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.” Wikiquote lists that sentence under “Attributed to Andrew Jackson” ↗, flags it as likely misattributed with a link to Quote Investigator, and says it is only sometimes reported as a retort to John Quincy Adams, who boycotted Harvard’s 1833 award of an honorary doctorate to Jackson. Wikiquote traces that framing to a 1987 journalism textbook, M. Mencher’s News Reporting and Writing, 4th edition — not to any contemporary record.

The same entry records “Never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word” as an unsourced variant. Variant-hopping like this is itself a warning sign: a real quotation tends to have one stable wording tied to one document, while a floating gag reshapes itself every time it is retold.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Creativity Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Wayquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the 1855 Nyrum Reynolds and Hiram Runnels anecdotes, the 1875 Twain credit, the 1882 Jackson credit, and the verdict that the evidence for Twain or Jackson is very weak.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. XI (June–November 1855)archive.org

Full scan of the volume whose November “Editor’s Drawer” carries the Hiram Runnels anecdote on p. 860 — the excerpt quoted on this page.
The Illinois Schoolmaster, Vol. VIII (1875)archive.org

Contains the November 1875 “Spelling” item on p. 380, the earliest known attachment of the joke to Mark Twain.
New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1882archive.org

Page 273 of this issue carries the earliest Andrew Jackson credit Quote Investigator located, in an article on Groton’s hog reeves and constables.
Wikiquote: Andrew Jacksonen.wikiquote.org

Files the spelling line under “Attributed to Andrew Jackson” with a “Likely misattributed” note, and records the unsourced “Never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word” variant.
Monticello: Spell a word only one way (Spurious Quotation)web.archive.org

The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia’s spurious-quotations entry, listing Jackson, Twain, Chesterton and Fields as rival claimants and dating the first Jefferson credit to 1983.

Why it stuck to him

The man the joke got pinned on

Andrew Jackson

1767–1845 · 7th President of the United States, 1829–1837

Andrew Jackson was born in the Waxhaw settlement on the Carolina border on 15 March 1767, rose to fame as a general, served in both houses of Congress, and was president from 1829 to 1837; he died at the Hermitage near Nashville on 8 June 1845. He was relentlessly lampooned by his opponents as an unlettered frontiersman, and, as Ralph Keyes notes in The Quote Verifier, “particularly ridiculed for being a poor speller” — which is precisely why a ready-made joke about creative spelling drifted onto him decades after he was gone. The same reputation attracted other inventions, including the mangled order “Elevate them guns a little lower.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printing

“Spelling Words More Than One Way,” Jamestown Journal (Jamestown, New York), 31 August 1855, p. 3, col. 2; reprinted in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 11, no. 66 (November 1855), “Editor’s Drawer,” p. 860. Attribution history traced in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way,” 25 June 2010, updated 28 January 2025.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/no-respect-for-a-man-who-can-spell-a-word-only-one-way/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied