Abstract
In this article, the author approaches the ideas and discussions which arose regarding spelling on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (mainly in France and Hispanic America) during the first half of the 19th Century. Writers such as Melchor Ocampo had already formulated in the pages of El Siglo XIX and El Diario de México the convenience of compiling a list of particular idioms from Mexico (Idiotismos hispano-mexicanos), words, sayings and proverbs different from those in peninsular Spanish. Other scholars, both from Hispanic America and Europe, expressed the necessity of adopting a "phonetic" spelling system, "writing as words are sounded", using a written language close to the language's pronunciation, a spelling belonging to the nations of the Spanish America, which —in the words of Gabriel García Márquez— would not become "straightjackets and chastity belts".