Spelling Reform and the Writer

Spelling Reform and the Writer Spelling Reform and the Writer Spelling Reform and the Writer By Maeve Maddox A reader, responding to Case of the Missing is: foliage, verbiage, miniature , asks reasonably: Can’t we change the spelling? Before the widespread use of dictionaries, the answer to this question would have been Of course we can! Not anymore. The free and easy use of personal spellings to convey the pronunciation of the word intended by the person writing has not been an option since the middle of the seventeenth centuryat least not for writers who wish to avoid having their credibility questioned. Attempts to regularize English spelling began as long ago as the 1550s and reform groups are still at it. Some of the suggestions would require quite a learning curve. Reformer Thomas Smith (1568) increased the alphabet to 34 letters and put marks over all the long vowels. John Hart (1570) added special characters for sounds that dont have letters in the English alphabet, such as /ch/ and /sh/. William Bullokar (1580) created a system that made use of extra letters, accents, apostrophes, and various hooks above and below letters. Printer Ben Franklin promoted spelling reform by having a special font cut with extra symbols, and efforts have been made in more recent times to change spelling to conform to pronunciation. In 1898 the National Education Association adopted 12 simplified spellings in its publications: tho, altho, thoro, thorofare, thru, thruout, program, catalog, prolog, decalog, demagog, and pedagog. A glance at the NEAs website suggests that theyve given up on all but two. In the 1940s the Bible and some classics were printed using a phonetic system of spelling invented in the 1830s by Isaac Pitman (the shorthand man). Traditional English spelling is like our relatives: to be complained about, but not easily dispensed with. This extract from an experiment by Noah Webster (quickly abandoned, by the way) illustrates how ugly and internally inconsistent a reformed system can be: There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; On the whole, English speakers remain indifferent to the efforts of spelling reformers, and that is a good thing for writers. Writers, of all people, need to appreciate and cherish the variety of English spelling. Take this example from Robert Sklars Movie-Made America: Once admitted to the intimacies of reel life, movie patrons wanted their fantasies continued unbroken into real life. Sklar could not have written that sentence with its play on reel and real if English had only one spelling for the long E sound. TIP: Traditional English spelling is a useful item in the writers toolbox. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:10 Grammar Mistakes You Should Avoid20 Pairs of One-Word and Two-Word Forms10 Tips to Improve Your Writing Skills