English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

Especially was this true of the words of the class under consideration. At the time Johnson was engaged in the preparation of his dictionary the forms in or had come to be in a distinct majority. Usage was variable, it is true, depending as it did on individual likes or dislikes. But on the whole a preference was beginning to manifest itself for the termination or, at least outside of certain words. Still, it would have been then possible to bring about uniformity by the adoption of either ending to the exclusion of the other. From the orthographical point of view of that period, no serious objection would have been offered by the large majority of men to that course of action. But such a proceeding would, in the eyes of many, have been attended with one fatal defect. It would have made the termination of all the words of this class uniform, and therefore easy to understand and to master. This would have brought the result into conflict with the cherished though unavowed ideal we hold, which is to make the spelling as difficult of acquisition as possible. In this feeling Johnson himself unconsciously shared. He had to the full that love of the illogical and anomalous and unreasonable, with the contributing fondness for half-measures, which is so characteristic of our race as contrasted with the French. This attitude was reflected in his treatment of this particular class of words. He compromised the controversy between the two endings in the case of about a hundred of the most common of them by impartially spelling about half with or and the other half with our.

Furthermore, in regard to the particular class of words under discussion, both Johnson’s theory and practice must be taken into consideration. Between these there was wide divergence, and oftentimes contradiction. In theory he set himself resolutely against the efforts of those who were seeking to bring about uniformity. He pointed out that “our is frequently used in the last syllable of words which in Latin end in or, and are made English as honour, labour, favour, for honor, labor, favor.” He then set out to give the reasons for his own choice of the form he had adopted. “Some late innovators,” he wrote, “have ejected the u, not considering that the last syllable gives the sound neither of o nor u, but a sound between them, if not compounded of both.” The just observation contained in one part of this sentence is rendered nugatory by the unfounded assertion at the end and the extraordinary conclusion drawn. Johnson’s argument really amounts to this: Neither o nor u represents the actual vowel sound heard in the last syllable. In each case there would be only an approach to it. Therefore, let us not think of employing either one of the vowels which represent the sound only imperfectly, but a vowel combination which does not represent it at all.

His cautiously guarded utterance shows that Johnson was vaguely conscious of the weakness of the position he had taken if not of its absurdity. Hence, he felt the need of furnishing it additional support. So he abandoned phonetics and resorted to derivation. He proceeded to suggest a reason which since his day has played the most important of parts in all the attempts which have been made to explain the cause of the retention of our in the spelling of these words. “Besides that,” he continued, “they are probably derived from the French nouns in eur, as honeur (sic), faveur.” Johnson had not that courage of his ignorance which distinguishes the assertions of later men who employ his argument. He spoke hesitatingly of the derivation as a probability. As it was erroneous, this course was wise. His followers, however, from that day to this, have invariably stated it as a fact. He repeated, nevertheless, his general view in the grammar with which he prefaced the dictionary. “Some ingenious men,” he remarked, sarcastically, “have endeavored to deserve well of their country by writing honor and labor for honour and labour.”

Such was Johnson’s attitude in theory; his action was distinctly different. Like the rest of us, he was governed entirely by sentiment working independently of knowledge or reason. He preferred the spelling, as do we all, which he himself was wont to use. He judged it to be the proper spelling because he was familiar with it. The utter lack of any intelligent or even intelligible principle he was actuated by in his choice can be illustrated by two or three examples. Anterior was spelled by him with the ending our; posterior with the ending or. The termination of interior was our; that of exterior was or. This is not the reign of law, but of lawlessness. The only explanation I have been able to devise of the motives, outside of association, which may have unconsciously led him to adopt the ending he did in any particular case, was a possible feeling on his part that when the word denoted the agent it should have the termination or; but our when it denoted state or condition. This is not a satisfactory reason for making a difference; but it has a glimmering of sense. Yet while in general this course is true of Johnson’s practice, it is, unfortunately, not universally true. Stupor and torpor appeared, for illustration, in his dictionary without the u; while on the other hand with it are found ambassadour, emperour, governour, and warriour.

It is certain that Johnson himself, in the spellings he authorized, never conformed to the principle of derivation, which he held out to us as the all-sufficient guide. Several of the words which appear in his dictionary with the intruding vowel had come to us directly from the Latin. Accordingly, the form he gave them was in direct defiance of the principles which he had laid down. Of these candor is so striking an example that it is worth while to give some account of it in detail. The word came into our language in the fourteenth century, but as a pure Latin word. When used in the black-letter period, after the invention of printing, it appeared in Roman type, to indicate that it was still a foreigner, just as we now indicate a borrowed term by italics. In the early seventeenth century it had become naturalized. Accordingly, it was at first spelled like its original. About the middle of the seventeenth century u was occasionally inserted. This way of spelling it increased after the Restoration. Necessarily, such a usage not only defied but disguised the real original. For a long time the correct and incorrect forms flourished side by side. It was Johnson’s adoption of the ending our for the word which fixed this erroneous spelling upon the English people. Men now tell you with all the intense earnestness of ignorance that candor should be spelled with a u because it came from a foreign word which has no direct connection with it whatever. Yet the very same men who insist upon retaining a u in honor, because, as they fancy, it was derived from the French honneur, cling just as tenaciously to the form candour, and will cling to it after they have learned to know that it was derived directly from the Latin candor.

Not only, indeed, in his preaching, but in his personal practice, Johnson may be said to have been inconsistent in his inconsistency. Of this there is a most singular illustration. In the dictionary itself author was given as here spelled. Not even a hint was conveyed of the existence of another form. But in the preface to the dictionary this same word was employed by him just fourteen times. In every instance it was spelled authour. Nor could this have been the fault of the type-setter. So far was it from exciting remonstrance or reprehension on his part that the form is not only found in the first edition of 1755, but also in the fourth edition of 1773, the last which appeared in his lifetime, and which underwent some slight revision at his hands. Had Johnson chanced to adopt in the body of the work the spelling of this word as it appeared in his preface to it, the form with u would in all probability have continued to maintain itself. Men would be found at this day to insist that the very safety of the language depended upon its permanent retention. There would, indeed, be authors who would fail to recognize themselves as authors unless this unnecessary u was inserted into the word denoting their profession.

But though the weight of Johnson’s authority was impaired by his practice, there is no question that his words did more to prevent the universal adoption of the ending or than any other single agency. For that purpose they were timely. There had then begun to be something of an effort to correct certain of the most striking errors and inconsistencies of English orthography. With this, Hume, for one, sympathized. That this assumed enemy of the faith should be favorably inclined to any movement of the sort, and to some extent should conform to it, was enough of itself to set Doctor Johnson against it. That author, in the first edition of his History, had followed what was then sometimes called the new method of spelling. As regards the particular class of words here under consideration, he used several such forms as ardor, flavor, labor, vigor, and splendor. But Hume had no vital interest in the matter. His reason told him what was proper and analogical; but he was little disposed to fight convention on this point. Therefore, he wavered at intervals between spellings which he recognized as sensible and those which had the approval of the printing-house and consequently that of the general public. “I had once an intention of changing the orthography in some particulars,” he wrote, in 1758, to Strahan, on the occasion of bringing out a new edition of his History, “but on reflection I find that this new method of spelling (which is certainly the best and most conformable to analogy) has been followed in the quarto volume of my philosophical writings lately published; and, therefore, I think it will be better for you to continue the spelling as it is.”[32]

In truth, the moment that Doctor Johnson had set the example of attacking the pestilent disturbers of orthographic peace, a host of imitators were sure to follow in his footsteps. One of these was the physician John Armstrong, who dabbled also, to some extent, in literature. Among other things, he produced one of those ponderous poems in which the eighteenth century abounded, and with which the extremely conscientious student of English literature feels himself under obligation to struggle. He also tried his hand at a volume of short Sketches and Essays, as they were called, which came out anonymously. Among them was one on the Modern Art of Spelling. In it he attacked with vigor the so-called reformers who were employing the forms honor, favor, labor. Indeed, he apprised us—what otherwise we should hardly have known—that there were then misguided beings who threw out one of the vowels in the termination of words not belonging strictly to the class we are discussing, and wrote neighbor, behavior, and endeavur. Armstrong’s little work appeared in 1757; it might have been written yesterday. It displays the same misunderstanding and misconception of the whole subject which characterizes the men of our day, who have the advantage of being heirs to the accumulated ignorance of the past. In places, too, he was as amusing as they. Nothing, he told us, did so much to distinguish his own “as an unmanly age”—the italics are his—“as this very aversion to the honest vowel u.”

Hume’s attitude of indifference is manifested in his comments on this volume. He evidently considered himself as one of the men aimed at in its animadversions upon the reformers. In June, 1758, he spoke about the work in a letter to his publisher, Andrew Millar. “I have read,” he wrote, “a small pamphlet called Sketches, which, from the style, I take to be Doctor Armstrong’s, though the public voice gives it to Allan Ramsay. I find the ingenious author, whoever he be, ridicules the new method of spelling, as he calls it; but that method of spelling honor, instead of honour, was Lord Bolingbroke’s, Doctor Middleton’s, and Mr. Pope’s, besides many other eminent writers. However, to tell truth, I hate to be in any way particular in a trifle; and, therefore, if Mr. Strahan has not printed off above ten or twelve sheets, I should not be displeased if you told him to follow the usual—that is, his own—way of spelling throughout; we shall make the other volumes conformable to it: if he be advanced farther, there is no great matter.”[33] This is by no means a solitary instance of the way in which authors have submitted their own convictions to the practices of printing-houses and thereby caused this creation of type-setters we call English orthography, to be an object of reverent worship to thousands, who contribute large sums to convert those bowing down to gods of wood and stone.

Great, however, as was Johnson’s authority, there was not paid to it at the time unquestioning assent. The glaring inconsistency between his principles and his practice made many indisposed to accept him as an infallible guide. Dissent came from two quarters. There were those who accepted fully his views as to the propriety of following the form of the assumed immediate original. These not unreasonably looked with disfavor upon his dereliction in the case of many words. Among the recalcitrants was his devoted disciple Boswell. In 1768 this author brought out the journal of his tour in Corsica. In the preface to it he expressed the feelings of many in his comments upon his master’s course in this matter. “It may be necessary,” he wrote, “to say something in defense of my orthography. Of late it has become the fashion to render our language more neat and trim by leaving out k after c, and u in the last syllable of words which used to end in our. The illustrious Mr. Samuel Johnson, who has alone executed in England what was the task of whole academies in other countries, has been careful in his dictionary to preserve the k as a mark of the Saxon original. He has for the most part, too, been careful to preserve the u, but he has also omitted it in several words. I have retained the k, and have taken upon me to follow a general rule with regard to words ending in our. Wherever a word originally Latin has been transmitted to us through the medium of the French, I have written it with the characteristic u. An attention to this may appear trivial. But I own I am one of those who are curious in the formation of language in its various modes, and therefore wish that the affinity of English with other tongues may not be forgotten.”