Sonia Jaffe Robbins, Editing Workshop, G54.1123, WEEK III
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Intro
History
Other spelling problems
How to Use the Dictionary
Spelling Tips
What about the spellcheck?
Spelling is something we think of as being right or wrong. Dictionaries tell us the "correct" spelling. But dictionaries often give more than one spelling for a word, and as spelling variations shows, dictionaries don't all agree on which spelling comes first.
Spelling in English is difficult to learn. (In some languages, like Slavic ones, spelling is very easy: every letter has only one sound associated with it, so if you pronounce the word correctly, you will be able to spell it correctly. On the other hand, the grammar of Slavic languages is very, very complicated. While spelling in English may be difficult, because each letter usually has more than one possible pronunciation, English grammar is comparatively simple.) Even native speakers have trouble with spelling. Spelling bees reward American school children who are good spellers of words they may never have used, to encourage students to learn to spell well. But we don't have grammar bees, for rewarding users of good grammar.
In English, the right spelling is not engraved in stone. Before printing existed, spelling was completely idiosyncratic. Spelling standards weren't even conceived of in English until the 16th and 17th centuries, when English printers began to insist on some uniformity in spelling words they had to set in type. Consistent spelling standards made their job easier. And the spellings often reflected south of England pronunciations, since that is where most printers were located.
Samuel Johnson's 18th century dictionary may have been the first English-language dictionary compiled by a writer of words, rather than a printer of them. Early dictionaries were decidedly prescriptive (see Word Use and Abuse). And as dictionaries have become more descriptive in including all meanings used, so they are more descriptive with spelling, often including more than one spelling for one word. (These different spellings may be listed at the beginning of the word entry, at the end of the entry, or even as a separate entry, marked VAR. (for variant).
Where do all these spelling variations come from? Many words become English words from other languages, which may lead to words changing their spelling as their pronunciation is Anglicized, while the original spelling may also coexist. (E.g., "ambience" is the French spelling, and remains a common spelling in English, especially since, paradoxically, it matches the Anglicized pronunciation. But the French pronunciation leads to a different spelling in English, "ambiance," and now that is also a common English spelling.) Other words from non-English sources maintain their non-English spelling (e.g., hors d'oeuvres) despite their Anglicized pronunciation. (Some immigrants change the spelling of their name to make it more English-looking: composer Arnold Schönberg dropped the umlaut as soon as he arrived in the U.S., and became Arnold Schoenberg. Keep this in mind when you're fact-checking.)
Other spellings reflect changes in pronunciation over time. The -ough is one striking example of this in English. In the following sentence, the -ough letter combination represents six different pronunciations.
| A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed. |
Some of these -ough spellings have yielded to the many attempts to simplify spelling, known as spelling reform: "ploughman" is now "plowman," "hiccoughed" has become "hiccuped" (or "hiccupped"). Spelling reform in the United States has often gone along with utopian political movements, especially during the 19th century. There have been whole books published by spelling reform societies, and some interesting works of literature have been lost to us because they were printed using these never-widely-accepted simplified spelling methods. Some spelling reforms were taken up by newspapers, like the New York Daily News, like "subpena" (for "subpoena") or "cigaret," but the Daily News is now reverting to more common spellings.
What about spelling words that come from languages that don't use a Latin alphabet (e.g., Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Ethiopian)? Commonly used words from these languages will be in English dictionaries, but if the word in question isn't, where does one find an authority? And what to do when the authority changes?
In 1979, the Chinese government introduced a new method of transliterating Chinese into English, known as Pinyin (meaning "transcription" in Chinese), to replace a system called Wade-Giles, devised in the mid-19th century by two British scholars. Thus, Mao Tse-Tung became Mao Zedong, and Peking became Beijing. Some publications, like the New York Times, changed as well, but others kept the Wade-Giles spellings for several years because their editors considered the spellings more familiar to their readers. How many readers now are familiar with the Wade-Giles system?
When Libya was in the news, the transliteration of that country's leader's name was variously rendered:
| New York Times, Christian Science Monitor | Qaddafi |
| Los Angeles Times | Kadafi |
| Washington Post | Gadhafi |
| Newsweek | Kaddafi |
| AP, New York Post | Khadafy |
| U.S. government | Qadhaafi |
| scholarly transliteration | Qathafi |
Some spelling problems are not related to pronunciation, but to the question of whether it's two words, hyphenated, or one word? Some examples:
best seller, best-seller, bestseller
post card, postcard
make-up, makeup
E-mail, e-mail, email
Even in English, there are national differences in spelling. Americans write checks, while the British write cheques; Americans step off the curb, while the British step off the kerb; American uphold their honor, but the British uphold their honour (as well as many other -our words). But notice that Americans, usually, still believe in glamour, not glamor.
When spellings are presented in a series, the first is the most common, the next less common, etc. Most publications require copy editors to use the first spelling (as the most common) in whatever dictionary is the house dictionary, or to use the spelling of the main entry, not the variant. This reinforces the most common spelling, for the users of any particular dictionary. But, since there are different dictionaries used by different publications, there will always be some difference in what is considered "the most common spelling."
So are there any helpful hints to get us through the spelling slough?
| NOUN | VERB |
| des-ert | de-sert |
| rec-ord | re-cord |
| proj-ect | pro-ject |
| mi-nute | min-ute (adj.) |
| pres-ent | pre-sent |
| reb-el | re-bel |
If you're asked to insert "discretionary" hyphens, for example, to avoid excessively loose lines, don't guess. Use the dictionary to see where to break the word.
a NASA official
an ACLU spokeswoman
an $18 million deficit
Some publications now spell initialisms that are pronounced like words (NAFTA, NATO) as though they are words, with an initial cap only (Nafta, Nato). This does make it easier to know how to pronounce the initialism, but what do you think of it as a general rule?
| When adding a suffix to a word ending with a consonant, double the consonant only when the base word is only one syllable or the stress falls on the last syllable. run, running; occur, occurring; travel, traveling, cancel, canceling. (But the British use travelling and cancelling.) |
Last revision: January 16, 2005
