This news feature appears on my News of the World site.
English language spelling conventions became somewhat more rigid with the rise of popular literacy and the press that served it. Even in the 18th century, word spellings were hardly set in stone.
If a word appeared in the King James's English Bible version, there was at hand in agreed way of spelling it. But for many other words, including new ones made up by Greek scholars, there were few agreed spellings. A writer would spell it phonetically, according to how he had been taught to pronounce it. In fact sometimes a spelling would cause confusion and the word would begin to be pronounced "incorrectly," so that the "wrong" pronunciation eventually became right.
It was the use of new word books in 18th century London that began the process of spreading agreed spellings. From these stem the first dictionaries, which had a huge impact on standardization of spelling. Yet, there are two major sets of standard orthographies: British and American, as 19th century American editors felt free to truncate some "Britishisms," such as labor for labour or to use z for s, such as organize for organise.
Or here's a real bugbear: Is it judgement or judgment? In America only judgment is acceptable but in Britain you'll find both, with the British press tending to prefer judgement. Then there is licence (Britain) and license (America). Well, I haven't seen any publisher try lisens yet.
The British are more likely to leave the older form of words with supposedly Greek spellings, as in archaeology. Though that spelling is acceptable in America, archeology is nowadays more common. Similarly for manoeuver in Britain versus maneuver in America. After all, no American has any idea how to pronounce those Greek double and triple vowel sounds.
What of renascence for rennaisance? Spme may argue that renascence is a general form for revival, whereas Rennaisance is better capitalized as it refers to a specific period of European history. Yet I recall that a few decades back the term for that period was often spelled renascence.
Then we have rack versus wrack. Supposedly racked stems from the notion of being tortured on the rack of medieval England: mediaeval) days. But another derivation is from wreak and wreckage, whereby wrack.
In the 1930s, the Chicago Tribune favored adopting shortened forms of various words. Many of these were viewed with skepticism (scepticism in Britain) by the Trib's readers, but quite a few have caught on and several are now the dominant spelling in America. Nevertheless, later Trib editors repented of the terrible effrontery of their predecessors and threw out every reform, including the cute babies with the ugly ones.
Why write worshipper when readers are now used to worshiper?
But there is no doubt that some Trib ideas were better left for dead. For example, drouth for drought. But drouth is a regional pronunciation while the pronunciation drowt has wider currency.
News of the World is no stickler for stylistic consistency nor for uniformity of spelling, which is a subject that falls under the general heading of "style." We don't lose sleep over whether canceled (our preference) occasionally appears as cancelled.
Another "style" question might be whether we write Mr. or Mr (period in America, no period in Britain). Yet, we won't tolerate the seemingly more logical English practice of placing the period outside the quote marks at the end of a sentence. The American practice of placing the period before the quote marks never throws anyone off and looks much better typographically. Then there was the occasion that we heard an editor remark that the only time one writes a singular possessive as s' is for the Lord, as in Jesus' disciples. Otherwise we these days write, James's epistle. Grammarians may dispute that point, but few editors will.
Many words with a doubled consonant before an e were written that way because of the rule that if a root word ending in a consonant and an e tells you that the vowel before the consonant is to be pronounced "long." For example, if you saw dimed out of context you might not be sure whether the word was a gerund (noun serving as a verb), with a long a as in "he five-and-dimed me" (haggled) or whether it was a straightforward verb, as in "she dimmed the lamp."
But many words have meanings that are overwhelmingly dominant so that the base word's pronunciation is widely known and won't change with case change. The tacking on an ed is unlikely to fool the reader into mispronouncing a previous vowel. Why write cancelled when canceled works great? Only a very inexperienced reader of English might mispronounce the last as canceeled.
Sometimes words fashioned from Greek roots are routinely mispronounced. But once that mispronunciation takes hold, it becomes correct. Take the word agnostic, which nearly everyone reads and pronounces phonetically as ag-nostic, with a short a and a hard g. Yet if we follow the Greek, we have a-gnostic in which a means non and gnostic derives from gnosis, for knowledge. Only Greek scholars know how to pronounce gn as in gnaw. So the most correct pronunciation is ay-nostick. But most people hear ag-nostick as meaning non-knower, or someone who doesn't know whether there is a God.
A real mind-bender that often confuses people is the problem of the verb lead versus the noun lead. The verb's ea is pronounced ee (long). The noun's ea is pronounced as a short e. People are always writing, "She lead her party" for "She led her party." Yet people are quite accustomed to read with ea pronounced as a short e for the present tense and pronounced long for the past tense, presumably to avoid confusion for the color red.
We might try leed, as in leedership and leave led alone. But that's likely to face too much resistance from the qwerty loyalists. Maybe ledd for the metal, signaling a distinction from the two tenses of lead. And is there a real problem with red for the past tense of read even tho it is homonymous with the color? Context will suffice to tell us which is which.
We point out however that fanatical reformism holds no attraction for News of the World. Some battles just are not worth the time and energy. So many worthy candidates for revision are bypassed. But if sometime they pick up sufficient momentum, NotW may well take another look. Again. NotW does not strive for consistency in spelling rules. Some variant spellings, like donut are so common that we have no problem accepting them. Others are just as common -- lite, rite, nite -- and yet we arbitrarily tend to reject them. Still others -- tho, altho, thru, thoro -- are commonly regarded as acceptable abbreviations, but otherwise are cast aside. That is the tendency of NotW.
The point of the above monolog is that spellings and other matters of style are often highly arbitrary. They evolve as language and society evolve. So, please, all you fussbudgets, focus on something beyond orthography when you see Programer subpenaed in kidnaping one of these days in News of the World. If you smoke, take a cigaret break.
A list of a few of the spellings
preferred by News of the World
Words that end in logue. Make it log.
Prolog, dialog, monolog, analog, catalog, demagog, decalog, pedagog.
Words that sometimes end in our. Make it or.
Glamor, labor, Savior.
Words with the oe combination. Make it e.
Subpena, ameba.
Where possible and not too "far out," shun the doubled consonant. We prefer
Canceled, programed, programer, programing.
Other comments
Many words with a doubled consonant before an e were written that way because of the rule that if a root word ending in a consonant and an e tells the reader that the vowel before the consonant is to be pronounced "long." For example, if you saw dimed out of context you might not be sure whether the word was a gerund (noun serving as a verb), with a long i as in "he five-and-dimed me" (haggled) or whether it was a straightforward verb, as in "she dimmed the lamp."
But many words have meanings that are overwhelmingly dominant so that the base word's pronunciation is widely known and won't change with case change. The tacking on of an ed is unlikely to fool the reader into mispronouncing a previous vowel. Why write cancelled when canceled works great? Only a very inexperienced reader of English might mispronounce the last as canceeled.
Where possible NotW avoids the doubled consonant.
Some words ending in or are quite fine ending in er. Adviser or advisor? Take your pick.
Sometimes words fashioned from Greek roots are routinely mispronounced. But once that mispronunciation takes hold, it becomes correct. Take the word agnostic, which nearly everyone reads and pronounces phonetically as ag-nostic, with a short a and a hard g. Yet if we follow the Greek, we have a-gnostic in which a means non and gnostic derives from gnosis, for knowledge. Only Greek scholars know how to pronounce gn as in gnaw. So the most correct pronunciation is ay-no-stick, with long a and long o. But most people correctly interpret ag-nostick, with short a and short o as meaning non-knower, or someone who doesn't know whether there is a God.
A few words are worth a tryout period. Among those are ledd, to avoid confusion with the past tense of the verb lead
and red as a past tense of the verb read (that red would rarely be confused with the color).
Another thought: Where Americans pronounce an s as a z, change the spelling accordingly. That would end the common American goof-up of writing loose for lose. Under New Spelling (my grandiose master plan), we would have luze for lose and uze for the verb use while the latter is reserved for the noun.
Anyway, if we are to reform English orthography, why not get really radical? I have developed a form of shorthand that uses one to three fast strokes that give vowels (one or sometimes two strokes) and the most common consonantal combinations as a single symbol of one to three strokes. That system shows that we can re-systemize our current Latin alphabet. But that's not what I favor. I would like to see a new system in which, say, the most common 200 English syllables are each assigned a symbol. Other languages, such as Korean, do use a syllabic system. Japan uses a mix of syllabic and Chinese ideographic, I've been told.
We could have an English syllabic system, sprinkled with the old orthography, alongside the current system. Why bother? To make it easier for those so inclined to speed-read. The system remains phonetic, but the sound is given by one symbol rather than several. Presumably, the brain would naturally recognize sounds faster. This way, nearly everyone who learns the system will breeze along at a nice clip. Yet, many would still have the old system available. Hard-copy books could be sold in both systems -- especially under instant publishing -- and a reader could activate an icon on a cellphone or other computer to determine preferred reading system.
Yet, all that said, fanatical reformism holds no attraction for News of the World. Some battles just are not worth the time and energy. So many worthy candidates for revision are bypassed. But if sometime they pick up sufficient momentum, NotW may well take another look. For example, we have no quarrel for ending words with a q rather than with a que, but the qwerty effect makes this notion grotesq.
