English spelling and spelling reform

by Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury

Considerations of this sort do not apply to works designed strictly for the specialist and the highly educated. But even in the case of the great mass of men they do not apply to works which have been published since English orthography fell under the sway of the printing-house. The variations from the existing forms are indeed increasingly numerous the farther we go back; but even where they most prevail they are not really large in number or serious in character. Certainly they would not present to an intelligent human being the slightest obstacle to ease of reading or of comprehension. Hence, we have a right to demand that the few variations which exist should be reproduced both in their integrity and their entirety; that an edition of an author belonging to these later periods should represent his spelling as well as his grammar. In the vast majority of instances—excluding avowed reprints—this is not now the case. In the matter of orthography, rarely do editors or publishers have any conscience. The works of the past, even of the immediate past, are presented to us not in the spelling of the past, but in that of the present.

Hence, there is no occasion for surprise that such pitiful exhibitions of ignorance are so constantly displayed by men from whom we should naturally expect better things. The large majority of even cultivated readers do not see the words used by any great author of the past in the way in which he himself spelled them. They see them only as the modern printer chooses to spell them for him. It is, therefore, not surprising that the existing orthography should come to seem to such men not the comparatively late creation it is, but as something which has about it all the flavor of antiquity. As an inevitable result, there has been further imparted to it the odor of sanctity. Ignorance is recognized everywhere as a mother of devotion. Nowhere has there been a more striking manifestation of this truth than in the case of our spelling. The adoring worship of it seems to be more widely diffused in England than in America—at least, it is there more shameless in the exhibition of its lack of knowledge, though that is saying a good deal. We have all of late been made familiar with the somewhat unfortunate remark of an English writer, that the spelling of Shakespeare was good enough for him. Now an assertion of this sort would be worthless as an argument, even were it based upon a foundation of ascertained fact. We do not deprive ourselves of existing facilities of any sort, because they were not only unused, but were unheard of in the time of Queen Elizabeth. No one now feels himself under the necessity of refraining from making a rapid trip to Stratford by rail because Shakespeare was compelled to journey thither slowly and laboriously over the wretchedest of roads.

But in this instance an argument, worthless in itself, is made even more worthless, if possible, because the facts upon which it is presumed to be founded do not exist. Shakespeare flourished in a period when no eager desire existed for the maintenance of any strict orthographic monopoly. Within certain well-defined limits every one spelled pretty much as he pleased. Hence, the same word cannot infrequently be found in his writings, and in those of his contemporaries, with marked diversities of form. His usage, furthermore, differed in some cases entirely from any known to the modern world. But if his printed works fairly represent his practice, he evinced in many instances a perverse preference for what the semi-educated call American spelling. Let us test the truth of this last assertion by examining the attitude he assumed in a matter about which an orthographic controversy has been raging for centuries. This is the case of certain words which, according to one method of spelling, end in er, according to the other, in re.

As regards orthography, these words naturally divide themselves into two classes. In the first of these the termination is preceded by c. When this is the case the words fall under the influence of a general principle regulating pronunciation—so far as general principles can be said to regulate anything in English. According to it, c before the vowel e assumes the sound of s. The words of this particular class which Shakespeare uses are acre, lucre, and massacre. Were they made to end in er, they would have to come into conflict with the rule just mentioned. As a result they would mislead, as to their proper pronunciation, those who saw them for the first time. Under present conditions, they therefore cannot well undergo any change. The only way out of the difficulty would be to substitute k for c. Such a course we have taken, for instance, in the case of the word joke. This comes from the Latin joc-us with the same meaning. At its first introduction into the speech, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, it was spelled joque or joc. It finally gave up the c of the original and substituted for it k. On the other hand, in the adjective jocose, we retain the letter of the primitive which we have discarded in the noun.

This state of things is modern, because in Anglo-Saxon c had always the sound of k. Consequently, in æcer, the original of our word acre, there was neither difficulty nor confusion created by the employment of the letter. All this, however, was changed by the Norman Conquest. The pronunciation of c was in consequence affected, as it still is, by a following e. The result was that for a long time k was largely substituted in this particular word for the original letter. But in the fourteenth century the present method of spelling it came into fashion. It has remained in fashion ever since. The earlier form maintained itself for a while as of equal authority. It, indeed, died out slowly and reluctantly; but it died at last. In the collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, which appeared in 1623, acre was practically the only recognized spelling. The word occurs in this work just seven times. In one instance only does the older form crop up. When Hamlet tells Laertes, “Let them throw millions of acres on us,” the word is spelled akers.[3] In a similar way Bacon in his Advancement of Learning uses lukar for lucre. But examples of practices such as these are exceptional.

Consideration of a like sort does not, however, apply to the words of the second class to be considered. There are several of these now found with the ending er or re which do not appear in Shakespeare’s writings. Conspicuous among those not used by him are fibre or fiber, miter or mitre, niter or nitre, sabre or saber, specter or spectre. But the words of this second class which actually occur are more numerous than those of the first class. The most common ones employed by him, about which variation of usage now prevails, are center or centre, luster or lustre, meager or meagre, meter or metre, scepter or sceptre, sepulcher or sepulchre, theater or theatre. It becomes a matter, therefore, of some interest to discover which of these forms must be chosen by the writer who professes that Shakespeare’s spelling is good enough for him. The evidence afforded by the printed page—in this case the only evidence that can be secured—is accordingly given in the following paragraph.

Take the spelling of the words just mentioned as it is found in the folio of 1623. Center appears precisely twelve times in that volume. It is never spelled with re. In ten instances it has the termination er. Once the form centry is found, and once centure. Meager occurs five times. In every instance it ends in er. This similar statement may be made of meter, which is used but twice. In both these cases it has the termination er. Scepter is a word found far more frequently. It appears just thirty-five times.[4] Not once does it have the ending re; it is invariably er. The case is not essentially different with sepulcher. Thirteen times it occurs; eleven times with the termination er, twice with the termination re.[5] About the theater Shakespeare may be supposed to have had some knowledge. The word itself appears but six times in his plays. But even in these few instances he seems to have felt a perverse preference for the spelling in er over that in re. The former occurs just five times, the latter but once. The only consolation left for him who combines devotion to Shakespeare with devotion to the ending in re is found in the word spelled lustre or luster. It appears exactly thirteen times. Seven times it is spelled the former way, six times the latter.

Spellings of this sort, it may be added, are far from being limited to Shakespeare’s age. They were followed by many writers much later. Modern editions, to which we are accustomed, do more, as already intimated, than hide the fact from our eyes. They actually prevent, for most of us, the possibility of discovering it. Hence, the prevalent lack of intelligence, with its consequent hardiness of assertion, not unfrequently accompanied with the feeling of distress and repulsion at any proposal for change. He whose heart is affected with sadness at the sight of the spelling theater for theatre or center for centre, and whose prophetic soul foresees disaster as the result of the general adoption of such forms, would find his grief alleviated and his fears dispelled if he could only extend his knowledge sufficiently to familiarize himself with the real practice of the past, instead of getting his notions about it from the falsifications of the present. Examine, for instance, in regard to the very usage under discussion, the first edition of Addison’s Remarks on Italy. This work was brought out in 1705 by Tonson, the most noted publisher of the time. The same variation which prevailed earlier in the use of these terminations still continued. But there continued also a distinct preference for er over re. Fiber, salt-peter, and scepter are found as here printed. Theater occurs seven times, six times as theater, and once—in poetry—as theatre. Amphitheater is used ten times in all. Once its plural is spelled amphitheatres; in the other nine instances it has the ending in er.[6] On the other hand, meager and niter, both of which are used once, and sepulcher, which appears five times, have the termination re. Or, take Gulliver’s Travels, which came out more than a score of years later. The first edition of the work was published in 1726 in two volumes. In it center is found just seven times. In every instance it is spelled with the ending er, not once in re. Meager, it may be added, occurs twice, and in both cases as here spelled.[7] But here again, as in most other works, modern reprints falsify the record.

In these instances it is easy enough to exaggerate the importance of the evidence furnished on this point; at least, it is so in the case of the Elizabethans. In any fair discussion of orthography, two things are to be kept in view. One is to ascertain the exact facts; the other is not to get from them erroneous impressions. Let us go back, for instance, to Shakespeare and his spelling of words with the endings er or re. It is not in the least desirable to attribute to him feelings which he never had, nor even dreamed of having. Like his contemporaries, he found two forms of these words in use. Like them, he attached no particular sanctity to either. He unquestionably felt himself at liberty to use both. All, therefore, that one can positively say in the case of these words is that if Shakespeare had any preference, it was manifestly in favor of the termination in er.

If it be urged that the plays published after his death do not represent either his opinion or his practice, it is fair to say in reply that a like condition of things is revealed in the minor poems. All of these appeared in his lifetime. Over the printing of some of them he may have had no oversight. For the spelling of the words found in these he cannot, therefore, be held directly responsible. Still, the two most important of them—Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece—must, in going through the press, have passed under his own eye. In consequence, the spelling employed could not have failed to receive his tacit sanction at least, if even, what is more probable, he was not himself primarily responsible for it. Yet in these very two poems scepter[8] and sepulcher[9] are found so spelled in the original editions. A like statement may be made of this last word in the single instance in which it occurs in the Sonnets.[10] Further, the same thing may be said about his use of center[11] and meter.[12] Each appears but once, but it appears as just given. On the other hand meager, which is found five times in this form in the plays, has the spelling meagre[13] in its solitary occurrence in the poems. For neither one of these forms is Shakespeare likely to have felt any decided preference. Still, he could not have failed to see that there was no more reason for the spelling meagre instead of meager than there was for eagre in place of eager, or, to adopt the more common earlier orthography, egre.