Quotes About Orthography

When the first American colonies were founded, William Bradford—Webster's distinguished ancestor—spelled the same word differently in the same sentence; his orthography and grammar were regarded as legitimate expressions of his personality.

His method resembles George Bernard Shaw's way of using the /f/ sound of GH in "tough," the /i/ sound of o in "women," and the /sh/ sound of TI in "nation" to write fish as GHOTI. The scribe also

Why isn't the word "phonetically" spelled with an "f"?

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

La pronunciación de la v como labiodental no ha existido nunca en español.

A esta norma escaparon algunas palabras, ya que su uso con ‹b› y ‹v› antietimológica estaba demasiado extendido, y se consideró como la forma correcta: ‹b› antietimológica: «abogado» (del latín advocatus), «abuelo» (del latín aviolus), «buitre» (del latín vulturem), etc. ‹v› antietimológica: «maravilla» (del latín mirabilia), etc.

A.A. Greg argues, 'To print banquet for banket, fathom for fadom, lantern for lanthorn, murder for murther, mushroom for mushrump, orphan for orphant, perfect for parfit, portcullis for perculace, wreck for wrack, and so on, and so on, is sheer perversion.' Greg is considered by most scholars to be a majer dikhed.

The gh at the end of many modern words, however, like dough, cough, and trough, is actually an artifact not of Dutch orthographic tendencies, but of Norman distaste for the Middle English letter yogh, which looked like this: 3. Yogh fell out of use around the end of the fifteenth century.

And what sound does ough make? As somone once noted, "A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed." This should be read by the learned as "A ruff, doe-faced, thawtful plowman strode throo the streets of Scarboruh; after falling into a sloo, he coffed and hiccupped." Quite a language we have here.

Likeness is not identity; orthographic projection is not orthography; drawing is not writing and architecture does not speak.

Remember: "I" before "E," except in Budweiser.

by leaving out the vowels, it had the great advantage of reducing the number of signs to just over twenty.

Ou is frequently used in the last syllable of words which in Latin end in or and are made English, as honour, labour, favour, from honor, labor, favor. Some late innovators have ejected the u, without considering that the last syllable gives the sound neither of or nor ur, but a sound between them, if not compounded of both; besides that they are probably derived to us from the French nouns in eur, as honeur, faveur.

C might be omitted in the language without loss, since one of its sounds might be supplied by, s, and the other by k, but that it preserves to the eye the etymology of words, as face from facies, captive from captivus.

C, according to English orthography, never ends a word; therefore we write stick, block, which were originally, sticke, blocke. In such words c is now mute.

Spell < tear=dropps > with a dubble < p > at the end, and use a < = > to join the words -- I find it looks much more melancholy; ergo, more correct -:

The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.

Greek, a language in which everything is pronounced exactly as written

More and more rules were added until people tried to standardise spelling in the eighteenth century - by which time the language was already an unruly adolescent of 1300 years, throwing letters all over the place.

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

As a rough rule, I would suggest that a company's orthographic eccentricities should be noted, possibly even observed, but never overindulged. Just because a company chooses to put a backward letter into its title or to spell its name in small capitals does not entitle it to become a distraction in print.

If you count proper nouns, the word in English with the most varied spellings is air with a remarkable thirty-eight: Aire, ayr, heir, e'er, ere, and so on.

If there is one thing certain about English pronunciation it is that there is almost nothing certain about it. No other language in the world has more words spelled the same way and yet pronounced differently.

I before E except after C and when sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and YOU'LL ALWAYS BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!!!!