English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

It is not always easy to discover the motives which influence men in the choice of spellings. But it is no difficult matter to detect the reason for the change which here took place. Before the minds of the writers of this early period was always the Latin original. In that tongue the word began with h. Derivation is always dear to the hearts of the scholastically inclined. In those days it was only men of this class who did any writing at all. Hence, both in Old French and in Old English, it was not long before the letter h came to be prefixed regularly to the word. It was not sounded. But it was soon adopted universally in the spelling, and, once established there, it never lost its hold. In the case of several other words which have had essentially the same history, the pronunciation of the aspirate has been resumed under the influence of the printed page. But honor is one of four which up to this time have held out unflinchingly against any such tendency.

So much for the initial letter. As regards the termination, the word made its appearance in several forms. Only three of them need be mentioned here, for they were the ones much the most common. These were honor, honour, honur. The last was the first to go. It left the field to the other two forms, which have flourished side by side from that day to this. Were I to trust to the impressions produced by my own reading, I should say that from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth the form in our was much the more common. But, in the New Historical English Dictionary, Dr. Murray asserts distinctly that “honor and honour continued to be equally frequent down to the seventeenth century.” One accordingly must defer to the authority of a generalization which is based upon a much fuller array of facts than it is in the power of an individual to get together.

By the time we reach the sixteenth century, and especially the Elizabethan age, it is pretty plain that something of the orthographic controversy which has been raging ever since had already begun to make itself heard. The little we know about it we learn from brief remarks in books, or chance allusions in plays. The discussion, such as it was, seems to have had little regard to orthoepy, but was based almost entirely upon considerations of etymology. It was in the sixteenth century more particularly that derivation began to work havoc with the spelling. Sometimes it simplified it; full as frequently, if not more frequently, it perverted what little phonetic character words had possessed originally or had been enabled to retain. For the classical influence was then at its height. Consequently, a disposition was apt to manifest itself to go back to the Latin form and insert letters which had been dropped from the spelling because they had been dropped from the pronunciation.

It seems inevitable that the etymological bias so prevalent in the sixteenth century should have exerted some influence, and perhaps a good deal of influence, in causing a preference to be given by many to the forms in or. Old French had been forgotten by the community generally, and met the eyes of lawyers only. Modern French had not then so much vogue as Italian. But Latin was familiar to every educated man. It was accordingly natural that the spelling of the words of the class under consideration should show a tendency to go back to the forms employed in that tongue. This inference may seem to be borne out by the few specific data which have been collected. In the case of Shakespeare the existence of a concordance to his writings enables us to furnish certain positive statements with comparative ease. Mention has been made of the fact that in the folio of 1623 the spelling honor occurs twice as often as honour. Of course, in a work printed so long after his death, this is no positive evidence as to the dramatist’s own usage. But whatever preference he felt, it seems right to infer, was indicated in the two poems published in his lifetime. Of these the proofs must have passed under his own eye. In The Rape of Lucrece, which came out in 1594, the word occurs just twenty times: in seventeen instances it is spelled honor; in three, honour. In Venus and Adonis it is found but twice. In both instances honor is the spelling employed.

A generalization, however, based upon isolated facts is always liable to be misleading. Whatever value attaches to those just given is due mainly to the eminence of the author. No statement of universal, or even of common usage can be safely based upon them.[31] The examination of other books would in all likelihood show divergence in many instances from the practice here indicated. Furthermore, we must not forget that English orthography is not due to scholars or men of letters, but to typesetters. The spellings found in any book of the Elizabethan period are as likely to be those of the printing-house as of the author. This, in fact, is not unfrequently true of our own age. It is likewise clear that these same printing-houses exhibited a fine impartiality in the use of these terminations. Volume after volume can be taken up, on different pages of which we can find honor and honour, humor, and humour, labor and labour, and so on through the list. In truth, the book would be an exception where absolute uniformity prevailed.

An interesting example of this variableness of usage may be observed in the dozen lines in which Shakespeare dedicated, in 1593, his poem of Venus and Adonis to the Earl of Southampton. The inscription is to the “Right Honorable Henrie Wriothesley”; the address itself begins with “Right Honourable.” Throughout these few lines the phrase “your honor” occurs just three times. Twice it is spelled honor, once honour. Modern editions entirely ignore this variation of usage. In every instance they insert the u in the word, thus giving, as usual, to the modern reader an entirely false impression of Shakespeare’s practice.

In this matter the only incontrovertible fact to be found is that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries both honor and honour exist side by side. Which form occurs more frequently in the period could not be told without an exhaustive investigation of its whole literature. As a result of my own necessarily incomplete observation, I should say that from the middle of the seventeenth century there was a growing sentiment in favor of the ending our in the majority of dissyllabic words. This tendency became distinctly stronger after the Restoration. On the other hand, the disposition to use the form in or became increasingly prevalent in words of more than two syllables. To both these statements there are exceptions, perhaps numerous exceptions, especially in the case of the latter. Individual preferences, too counted for a great deal in an age when the idolatrous devotion to our present orthography had not begun to manifest itself. But the statements just given may be taken as a near approach to the truth, if not the precise truth itself.

Assuredly the tendency to use the forms in our increased in the latter half of the seventeenth century. This was true in particular of dissyllabic words. In the years which followed the Restoration it seems to have become dominant. Such a conclusion is apparently supported by the dictionaries of the time. Let us go back for evidence to our title-word. The spelling honour is the only one authorized in the dictionaries of Phillips, Kersey, Coles, Fenning, and Martin, which appeared during the latter part of the seventeenth century or the earlier part of the eighteenth. It has already been mentioned that before the publication of Doctor Johnson’s, the two leading authorities were Bailey’s and Dyche and Pardon’s. Of the two, the latter was probably the less widely used. Bailey gave to these now disputed words the ending in our. He did not even recognize the existence of that in or. On the other hand, Dyche, in the case of certain of them, authorized both forms. He put down, for example, honor and honour, error and errour, humor and humour. Furthermore, in each of these instances he gave the preference to the first. Of course, he was not thorough-going in his practice. He would have been unfaithful to the national spirit had he been consistent. Accordingly, in other words of this class, such as favor and labor, he recognized only the spelling in our.

But as in every period there are found those who cherish with peculiar affection whatever is anomalous or incongruous or irrational, and cling to it through good report and evil report, so there always spring up a pestilent crowd of men who have an abiding hostility to whatever displays these characteristics. The attention of certain restless beings of this sort began to be directed toward this very class of words. By the middle of the eighteenth century their influence was making itself felt. A perceptible disposition was manifested to do away with the irregularities that had come to prevail. It does not seem to have been based upon any phonetic grounds. It apparently owed little or nothing to the desire to conform to the Latin original. The aim seems simply to have been to simplify orthography by reducing all the words of this class to a uniform termination. At this time polysyllables belonging to it—the trisyllables being included under that term—had largely come to drop the u. So had a respectable number of dissyllables. Why not make the rule universal? Why add to the difficulty inherent in English orthography the further difficulty of an arbitrary distinction which serves no useful purpose? No particular reason seemed to exist why author and error should be spelled without u, and honor and favor and color with it. So they argued. The movement for dropping the vowel made distinct headway; it actually accomplished a good deal, and might have accomplished everything had it not met the powerful opposition of Doctor Johnson. In 1755 came out his dictionary. It did not drive out of circulation other works of the same kind, but it largely deprived them of authority with the educated. It practically gained the position of a court of final appeal.

Johnson knew very little about orthoepy and its relation to orthography; but on account of the deference paid to him, not only by his contemporaries, who knew nothing whatever about either, but also by later lexicographers, especially the two most prominent, Sheridan and Walker, his work is of very great importance for the influence it has had upon English spelling. Toward most of what he recommended a sort of religious respect was soon exhibited by many. This attitude may be said to have characterized for a long time the English people. He set himself against the processes of simplification that were going on. He laid down the dictum that the true orthography must always be regarded as dependent upon the derivation. It must, therefore, be determined by its immediate original. He did not conform to his own theory; he could not conform to it. But men accepted his assertions without paying any special heed to his practice. In consequence, his authority exerted a distinct influence toward retaining many spellings which in his time were tending to go out of use.