and they more than offset the occasional fashions for English
spellings on this side. Schele de Vere, in 1867, consoled himself for
Webster's "arbitrarily imposed orthography" by predicting that it
could be "only temporary"--that, in the long run, "North America
depends exclusively on the mother-country for its models of
literature." But the event has blasted this prophecy and confidence,
for the English, despite their furious reluctance, have succumbed to
Webster more than once. The New English Dictionary, a monumental work,
shows many silent concessions, and quite as many open yieldings--for
example, in the case of /ax/, which is admitted to be "better than
/axe/ on every ground." Moreover, English usage tends to march ahead
of it, outstripping the liberalism of its editor, Sir James A. H.
Murray. In 1914, for example, Sir James was still protesting against
dropping the first /e/ from /judgement/, a characteristic Americanism,
but during the same year the Fowlers, in their Concise Oxford
Dictionary, put /judgment/ ahead of /judgement/; and two years earlier
the Authors' and Printers' Dictionary, edited by Horace Hart,[15] had
dropped /judgement/ altogether. Hart is Controller of the Oxford
University Press, and the Authors' and Printers' Dictionary is an
authority accepted by nearly all of the great English book publishers
and newspapers. Its last edition shows a great many American
spellings. For example, it recommends the use of /jail/ and /jailer/
in place [Pg257] of the English /gaol/ and /gaoler/, says that /ax/
is better than /axe/, drops the final /e/ from /asphalte/ and /forme/,
changes the /y/ to /i/ in /cyder/, /cypher/ and /syren/ and advocates
the same change in /tyre/, drops the redundant /t/ from /nett/,
changes /burthen/ to /burden/, spells /wagon/ with one /g/, prefers
/fuse/ to /fuze/, and takes the /e/ out of /storey/. "Rules for
Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford," also edited
by Hart (with the advice of Sir James Murray and Dr. Henry Bradley),
is another very influential English authority.[16] It gives its
imprimatur to /bark/ (a ship), /cipher/, /siren/, /jail/, /story/,
/tire/ and /wagon/, and even advocates /kilogram/ and /omelet/.
Finally, there is Cassell's English Dictionary.[17] It clings to the
/-our/ and /-re/ endings and to /annexe/, /waggon/ and /cheque/, but
it prefers /jail/ to /gaol/, /net/ to /nett/, /asphalt/ to /asphalte/
and /story/ to /storey/, and comes out flatly for /judgment/, /fuse/
and /siren/.
Current English spelling, like our own, shows a number of
uncertainties and inconsistencies, and some of them are undoubtedly
the result of American influences that have not yet become fully
effective. The lack of harmony in the /-our/ words, leading to such
discrepancies as /honorary/ and /honourable/, I have already
mentioned. The British Board of Trade, in attempting to fix the
spelling of various scientific terms, has often come to grief. Thus it
detaches the final /-me/ from /gramme/ in such compounds as /kilogram/
and /milligram/, but insists upon /gramme/ when the word stands alone.
In American usage /gram/ is now common, and scarcely challenged. All
the English authorities that I have consulted prefer /metre/ and
/calibre/ to the American /meter/ and /caliber/.[18] They also support
the /ae/ in such words as /aetiology/, /aesthetics/, /mediaeval/ and
/anaemia/, and the /oe/ in /oesophagus/, [Pg258] /manoeuvre/ and
/diarrhoea/. They also cling to such forms as /mollusc/, /kerb/,
/pyjamas/ and /ostler/, and to the use of /x/ instead of /ct/ in
/connexion/ and /inflexion/. The Authors' and Printers' Dictionary
admits the American /curb/, but says that the English /kerb/ is more
common. It gives /barque/, /plough/ and /fount/, but grants that
/bark/, /plow/ and /font/ are good in America. As between /inquiry/
and /enquiry/, it prefers the American /inquiry/ to the English
/enquiry/, but it rejects the American /inclose/ and /indorse/ in
favor of the English /enclose/ and /endorse/.[19] Here American
spelling has driven in a salient, but has yet to take the whole
position. A number of spellings, nearly all American, are trembling on
the brink of acceptance in both countries. Among them is /rime/ (for
/rhyme/). This spelling was correct in England until about 1530, but
its recent revival was of American origin. It is accepted by the
Oxford Dictionary and by the editors of the Cambridge History of
English Literature, but it seldom appears in an English journal. The
same may be said of /grewsome/. It has got a footing in both
countries, but the weight of English opinion is still against it.
/Develop/ (instead of /develope/) has gone further in both countries.
So has /engulf/, for /engulph/. So has /gipsy/ for /gypsy/.
American imitation of English orthography has two impulses behind it.
First, there is the colonial spirit, the desire to pass as English--in
brief, mere affectation. Secondly, there is the wish among printers,
chiefly of books and periodicals, to reach a compromise spelling
acceptable in both countries, thus avoiding expensive revisions in
case of republication in England.[20] [Pg259] The first influence
need not detain us. It is chiefly visible among folk of fashionable
pretensions, and is not widespread. At Bar Harbor, in Maine, some of
the summer residents are at great pains to put /harbour/ instead of
/harbor/ on their stationery, but the local postmaster still continues
to stamp all mail /Bar Harbor/, the legal name of the place. In the
same way American haberdashers sometimes advertise /pyjamas/ instead
of /pajamas/, just as they advertise /braces/ instead of /suspenders/
and /vests/ instead of /undershirts/. But this benign folly does not
go very far. Beyond occasionally clinging to the /-re/ ending in words
of the /theatre/ group, all American newspapers and magazines employ
the native orthography, and it would be quite as startling to
encounter /honour/ or /jewellery/ in one of them as it would be to
encounter /gaol/ or /waggon/. Even the most fashionable jewelers in
Fifth avenue still deal in /jewelry/, not in /jewellery/.
The second influence is of more effect and importance. In the days
before the copyright treaty between England and the United States, one
of the standing arguments against it among the English was based upon
the fear that it would flood England with books set up in America, and
so work a corruption of English spelling.[21] This fear, as we have
seen, had a certain plausibility; there is not the slightest doubt
that American books and American magazines have done valiant
missionary service for American orthography. But English conservatism
still holds out stoutly enough to force American printers to certain
compromises. When a book is designed for circulation in both countries
it is common for the publisher to instruct the printer to employ
"English spelling." This English spelling, at the Riverside Press,[22]
embraces all the /-our/ endings and the following further forms:
cheque
chequered
connexion
dreamt
faggot
forgather
forgo
grey
inflexion
jewellery
leapt
premises (in logic)
waggon
It will be noted that /gaol/, /tyre/, /storey/, /kerb/, /asphalte/,
/annexe/, /ostler/, /mollusc/ and /pyjamas/ are not listed, nor are
the words ending in /-re/. These and their like constitute the English
contribution to the compromise. Two other great American book presses,
that of the Macmillan Company[23] and that of the J. S. Cushing
Company,[24] add /gaol/ and /storey/ to the list, and also /behove/,
/briar/, /drily/, /enquire/, /gaiety/, /gipsy/, /instal/, /judgement/,
/lacquey/, /moustache/, /nought/, /pigmy/, /postillion/, /reflexion/,
/shily/, /slily/, /staunch/ and /verandah/. Here they go too far, for,
as we have seen, the English themselves have begun to abandon /briar/,
/enquire/ and /judgement/. Moreover, /lacquey/ is going out over
there, and /gipsy/ is not English, but American. The Riverside Press,
even in books intended only for America, prefers certain English
forms, among them, /anaemia/, /axe/, /mediaeval/, /mould/, /plough/,
/programme/ and /quartette/, but in compensation it stands by such
typical Americanisms as /caliber/, /calk/, /center/, /cozy/,
/defense/, /foregather/, /gray/, /hemorrhage/, /luster/, /maneuver/,
/mustache/, /theater/ and /woolen/. The Government Printing Office at
Washington follows Webster's New International Dictionary,[25] which
supports most of the innovations of Webster himself. This dictionary
is the authority in perhaps a majority of American printing offices,
with the Standard and the Century supporting it. The latter two also
follow Webster, notably in his /-er/ [Pg261] endings and in his
substitution of /s/ for /c/ in words of the /defense/ class. The
Worcester Dictionary is the sole exponent of English spelling in
general circulation in the United States. It remains faithful to most
of the /-re/ endings, and to /manoeuvre/, /gramme/, /plough/,
/sceptic/, /woollen/, /axe/ and many other English forms. But even
Worcester favors such characteristic American spellings as /behoove/,
/brier/, /caliber/, /checkered/, /dryly/, /jail/ and /wagon/.
§ 5
/Simplified Spelling/--The current movement toward a general reform of
English-American spelling is of American origin, and its chief
supporters are Americans today. Its actual father was Webster, for it
was the long controversy over his simplified spellings that brought
the dons of the American Philological Association to a serious
investigation of the subject. In 1875 they appointed a committee to
inquire into the possibility of reform, and in 1876 this committee
reported favorably. During the same year there was an International
Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography at Philadelphia,
with several delegates from England present, and out of it grew the
Spelling Reform Association.[26] In 1878 a committee of American
philologists began preparing a list of proposed new spellings, and two
years later the Philological Society of England joined in the work. In
1883 a joint manifesto was issued, recommending various general
simplifications. In 1886 the American Philological Association issued
independently a list of recommendations affecting about 3,500 words,
and falling under ten headings. Practically all of the changes
proposed had been put forward 80 years before by Webster, and some of
them had entered into unquestioned American usage in the meantime,
/e. g./, the deletion of the /u/ from the /-our/ words, the substitution
of [Pg262] /er/ for /re/ at the end of words, the reduction of
/traveller/ to /traveler/, and the substitution of /z/ for /s/
wherever phonetically demanded, as in /advertize/ and /cozy/.
The trouble with the others was that they were either too uncouth to
be adopted without a struggle or likely to cause errors in
pronunciation. To the first class belonged /tung/ for /tongue/, /ruf/
for /rough/, /batl/ for /battle/ and /abuv/ for /above/, and to the
second such forms as /cach/ for /catch/ and /troble/ for /trouble/.
The result was that the whole reform received a set-back: the public
dismissed the industrious professors as a pack of dreamers. Twelve
years later the National Education Association revived the movement
with a proposal that a beginning be made with a very short list of
reformed spellings, and nominated the following by way of experiment:
/tho/, /altho/, /thru/, /thruout/, /thoro/, /thoroly/, /thorofare/,
/program/, /prolog/, /catalog/, /pedagog/ and /decalog/. This scheme
of gradual changes was sound in principle, and in a short time at
least two of the recommended spellings, /program/ and /catalog/, were
in general use. Then, in 1906, came the organization of the Simplified
Spelling Board, with an endowment of $15,000 a year from Andrew
Carnegie, and a formidable membership of pundits. The board at once
issued a list of 300 revised spellings, new and old, and in August,
1906, President Roosevelt ordered their adoption by the Government
Printing Office. But this unwise effort to hasten matters, combined
with the buffoonery characteristically thrown about the matter by
Roosevelt, served only to raise up enemies, and since then, though it
has prudently gone back to more discreet endeavors and now lays main
stress upon the original 12 words of the National Education
Association, the Board has not made a great deal of progress.[27] From
time to time it issues impressive lists of newspapers and periodicals
that are using some, at least, of its revised spellings and of
colleges that have made them optional, but an inspection of these
lists shows that very few [Pg263] publications of any importance have
been converted[28] and that most of the great universities still
hesitate. It has, however, greatly reinforced the authority behind
many of Webster's spellings, and it has done much to reform scientific
orthography. Such forms as /gram/, /cocain/, /chlorid/, /anemia/ and
/anilin/ are the products of its influence.
Despite the large admixture of failure in this success there is good
reason to believe that at least two of the spellings on the National
Education Association list, /tho/ and /thru/, are making not a little
quiet progress. I read a great many manuscripts by American authors,
and find in them an increasing use of both forms, with the occasional
addition of /altho/, /thoro/ and /thoroly/. The spirit of American
spelling is on their side. They promise to come in as /honor/, /bark/,
/check/, /wagon/ and /story/ came in many years ago, as /tire/,[29]
/esophagus/ and /theater/ came in later on, as /program/, /catalog/
and /cyclopedia/ came in only yesterday, and as /airplane/ (for
/aëroplane/)[30] is coming in today. A constant tendency toward logic
and simplicity is visible; if the spelling of English and American
does not grow farther and farther apart it is only because American
drags English along. There is incessant experimentalization. New forms
appear, are tested, and then either gain general acceptance or
disappear. One such, now struggling for recognition, is /alright/, a
compound of /all/ and /right/, made by analogy with /already/ and
/almost/. I find it in American manuscripts every day, and it not
infrequently gets into print.[31] So far no dictionary supports it,
but [Pg264] it has already migrated to England.[32] Meanwhile, one
often encounters, in American advertising matter, such experimental
forms as /burlesk/, /foto/, /fonograph/, /kandy/, /kar/, /holsum/,
/kumfort/ and /Q-room/, not to mention /sulfur/. /Segar/ has been more
or less in use for half a century, and at one time it threatened to
displace /cigar/. At least one American professor of English predicts
that such forms will eventually prevail. Even /fosfate/ and
/fotograph/, he says, "are bound to be the spellings of the
future."[33]
§ 6
/Minor Differences/--Various minor differences remain to be noticed.
One is a divergence in orthography due to differences in
pronunciation. /Specialty/, /aluminum/ and /alarm/ offer examples. In
English they are /speciality/, /aluminium/ and /alarum/, though
/alarm/ is also an alternative form. /Specialty/, in America, is
always accented on the first syllable; /speciality/, in England, on
the third. The result is two distinct words, though their meaning is
identical. How /aluminium/, in America, lost its fourth syllable I
have been unable to determine, but all American authorities now make
it /aluminum/ and all English authorities stick to /aluminium/.
Another difference in usage is revealed in the spelling and
pluralization of foreign words. Such words, when they appear in an
English publication, even a newspaper, almost invariably bear the
correct accents, but in the United States it is almost as invariably
the rule to omit these accents, save in publications of considerable
pretensions. This is notably the case with /café/, /crêpe/, /début/,
/débutante/, /portière/, /levée/, /éclat/, /fête/, /régime/, /rôle/,
/soirée/, /protégé/, /élite/, /mêlée/, /tête-à-tête/ and /répertoire/.
It is rare to encounter any of them with its proper accents in an
American newspaper; it is rare to encounter them unaccented in an
English [Pg265] newspaper. This slaughter of the accents, it must be
obvious, greatly aids the rapid naturalization of a newcomer. It loses
much of its foreignness at once, and is thus easier to absorb. /Dépôt/
would have been a long time working its way into American had it
remained /dépôt/, but immediately it became plain /depot/ it got in.
The process is constantly going on. I often encounter /naïveté/
without its accents, and even /déshabille/, /hofbräu/, /señor/ and
/résumé/. /Cañon/ was changed to /canyon/ years ago, and the cases of
/exposé/, /divorcée/, /schmierkäse/, /employé/ and /matinée/ are
familiar. At least one American dignitary of learning, Brander
Matthews, has openly defended and even advocated this clipping of
accents. In speaking of /naïf/ and /naïveté/, which he welcomes
because "we have no exact equivalent for either word," he says: "But
they will need to shed their accents and to adapt themselves somehow
to the traditions of our orthography."[34] He goes on: "After we have
decided that the foreign word we find knocking at the doors of English
[he really means American, as the context shows] is likely to be
useful, we must fit it for naturalization by insisting that it shall
shed its accents, if it has any; that it shall change its spelling, if
this is necessary; that it shall modify its pronunciation, if this is
not easy for us to compass; and that it shall conform to all our
speech-habits, especially in the formation of the plural."[35]
In this formation of the plural, as elsewhere, English regards the
precedents and American makes new ones. All the English authorities
that I have had access to advocate retaining the foreign plurals of
most of the foreign words in daily use, /e. g./, /sanatoria/,
/appendices/, /virtuosi/, /formulae/ and /libretti/. But American
usage favors plurals of native cut, and the /Journal/ of the American
Medical Association goes so far as to approve /curriculums/ and
/septums/. /Banditti/, in place of /bandits/, would seem an
affectation in America, and so would /soprani/ for /sopranos/ [Pg266]
and /soli/ for /solos/.[36] The last two are common in England. Both
English and American labor under the lack of native plurals for the
two everyday titles, /Mister/ and /Missus/. In the written speech, and
in the more exact forms of the spoken speech, the French plurals,
/Messieurs/ and /Mesdames/, are used, but in the ordinary spoken
speech, at least in America, they are avoided by circumlocution. When
/Messieurs/ has to be spoken it is almost invariably pronounced
/messers/, and in the same way /Mesdames/ becomes /mez-dames/, with
the first syllable rhyming with /sez/ and the second, which bears the
accent, with /games/. In place of /Mesdames/ a more natural form,
/Madames/, seems to be gaining ground in America. Thus, I lately found
/Dames du Sacré Coeur/ translated as /Madames of the Sacred Heart/ in
a Catholic paper of wide circulation,[37] and the form is apparently
used by American members of the community.
In capitalization the English are a good deal more conservative than
we are. They invariably capitalize such terms as /Government/, /Prime
Minister/ and /Society/, when used as proper nouns; they capitalize
/Press/, /Pulpit/, /Bar/, etc., almost as often. In America a movement
against this use of capitals appeared during the latter part of the
eighteenth century. In Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of
Independence /nature/ and /creator/, and even /god/ are in lower
case.[38] During the 20's and 30's of the succeeding century, probably
as a result of French influence, the disdain of capitals went so far
that the days of the week were often spelled with small initial
letters, and even /Mr./ became /mr/. Curiously enough, the most
striking exhibition of this tendency of late years is offered by an
English work of the highest scholarship, the Cambridge History of
English Literature. It uses the lower case for all titles, even
/baron/ and /colonel/ before proper names, and also avoids capitals in
such [Pg267] words as /presbyterian/, /catholic/ and /christian/, and
in the second parts of such terms as Westminster /abbey/ and Atlantic
/ocean/.
Finally, there are certain differences in punctuation. The English, as
everyone knows, put a comma after the street number of a house, making
it, for example, /34, St. James street/. They usually insert a comma
instead of a period after the hour when giving the time in figures,
/e. g./, /9,27/, and omit the /0/ when indicating less than 10
minutes, /e. g./, /8,7/ instead of /8.07/. They do not use the period
as the mark of the decimal, but employ a dot at the level of the upper
dot of a colon, as in /3·1416/. They cling to the hyphen in such words
as /to-day/ and /to-night/; it begins to disappear in America. They
use /an/ before /hotel/ and /historical/; Kipling has even used it
before /hydraulic/;[39] American usage prefers /a/. But these small
differences need not be pursued further.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Fowler & Fowler, in The King's English, p. 23, say that "when it
was proposed to borrow from France what we [/i. e./, the English] now
know as the /closure/, it seemed certain for some time that with the
thing we should borrow the name, /clôture/; a press campaign resulted
in /closure/." But in the /Congressional Record/ it is still
/cloture/, though with the loss of the circumflex accent, and this
form is generally retained by American newspapers.
[2] Richard P. Read: The American Language, /New York Sun/, March 7,
1918.
[3] /To shew/ has completely disappeared from American, but it still
survives in English usage. /Cf./ The /Shewing/-Up of Blanco Posnet, by
George Bernard Shaw. The word, of course, is pronounced /show/, not
/shoe/. /Shrew/, a cognate word, still retains the early pronunciation
of /shrow/ in English, but is now phonetic in American.
[4] /Cf./ Lounsbury; English Spelling and Spelling Reform; p. 209 /et
seq./ Johnson even advocated /translatour/, /emperour/, /oratour/ and
/horrour/. But, like most other lexicographers, he was often
inconsistent, and the conflict between /interiour/ and /exterior/, and
/anteriour/ and /posterior/, in his dictionary, laid him open to much
mocking criticism.
[5] In a letter to Miss Stephenson, Sept. 20, 1768, he exhibited the
use of his new alphabet. The letter is to be found in most editions of
his writings.
[6] R. C. Williams: Our Dictionaries; New York, 1890, p. 30.
[7] Nomenclature of Diseases and Condition, prepared by direction of
the Surgeon General; Washington, 1916.
[8] American Medical Association Style Book; Chicago, 1915.
[9] /Democratic Review/, March, 1856.
[10] /Vide/ English Spelling and Spelling Reform, p. 229.
[11] A Critical Review of the Orthography of Dr. Webster's Series of
Books ...; New York, 1831.
[12] Good English; p. 137 /et seq./
[13] Studies in English; pp. 64-5.
[14] Americanisms and Briticisms; New York, 1892, p. 37.
[15] Authors' & Printers' Dictionary ... an attempt to codify the best
typographical practices of the present day, by F. Howard Collins; 4th
ed., revised by Horace Hart; London, 1912.
[16] Horace Hart: Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University
Press, Oxford: 23rd ed.; London, 1914. I am informed by Mr. Humphrey
Davy, of the /London Times/, that, with one or two minor exceptions,
the /Times/ observes the rules laid down in this book.
[17] Cassell's English Dictionary, ed. by John Williams, 37th
thousand: London, 1908. This work is based upon the larger
Encyclopaedic Dictionary, also edited by Williams.
[18] /Caliber/ is now the official spelling of the United States Army.
/Cf./ Description and Rules for the Management of the U. S. Rifle,
/Caliber/ .30 Model of 1903; Washington, 1915. But /calibre/ is still
official in England as appears by the Field Service Pocket-Book used
in the European war (London, 1914, p. viii.)
[19] Even worse inconsistencies are often encountered. Thus /enquiry/
appears on p. 3 of the Dardanelles Commission's First Report; London,
1917; but /inquiring/ is on p. 1.
[20] Mere stupid copying may perhaps be added. An example of it
appears on a map printed with a pamphlet entitled Conquest and Kultur,
compiled by two college professors and issued by the Creel press
bureau (Washington, 1918). On this map, borrowed from an English
periodical called /New Europe/ without correction, /annex/ is spelled
/annexe/. In the same way English spellings often appear in paragraphs
reprinted from the English newspapers. As compensation in the case of
/annexe/ I find /annex/ on pages 11 and 23 of A Report on the
Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War Behind the Firing
Lines in France and Belgium; Miscellaneous No. 7 (1918). When used as
a verb the English always spell the word /annex/. /Annexe/ is only the
noun form.
[21] /Vide/ Matthews: Americanisms and Briticisms, pp. 33-34.
[22] Handbook of Style in Use at the Riverside Press, Cambridge,
Mass.; Boston, 1913.
[23] Notes for the Guidance of Authors; New York, 1918.
[24] Preparation of Manuscript, Proof Reading, and Office Style at J.
S. Cushing Company's; Norwood, Mass., n. d.