Ah my old nemesis...Spelling

All my life I have been a horrible speller. Going to bed early on Christmas eve was never a problem because my family would always have a giant family Scrabble competition into the wee hours of the morning (thought still retiring before St Nick made an appearance). Who wants to be awake for that? When I learned that spelling and punctuation were not standardized in the distant past, I thought it was the most brilliant idea ever. But, like many of you, when I try to read old documents I shake my fists and shout to the heavens "had these people no sense of language?" Standardization is important for more universal understanding and this standardization has been facilitated and fostered by print and publishing.

I have compiled an annotated bibliography of useful sources on the standardization of spelling. I hope you find it informative.

Bibliography

Amberg, Julie S., Deborah J. Vause, American English: History, Structure, and Usage, Cambridge University Press, 2009. 

Amberg and Vause summarize the long history of the English Language and the more recent development of American English. Chapter 6 is devoted to spelling. My favorite part was a discussion on the connection between culture and language. They included pictures of a protest of a spelling bee after a significant language reform. 

[I found this book when starting my search in the HBLL catalogs. I searched for "linguistics and spelling" this was one of the few books that did not focus on Thai, Spanish, or Irish]

Fisiak, Jacek, The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, Europaeischer Verlag der Wissenschaft, 2006. 

This book is useful because it is very focused on a narrow time period. Many of the other books I consulted covered a much longer time frame and so were not as detailed. the most useful portions are the section on pre-Chaucer standardization (p27-38) and the late Middle English Vowel Shift (p 175-180). The epilogue also provides some useful summary information. 

[This book was on a shelf near Amber and Vause's]

Trahern, Joseph B. Jr., Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change, University of Tennessee Press, 1989. 

An essay on the sources of standardization (p21-43) is very useful. It discusses the rise of the Chancery Standard and the Wycliffite Standard and explains them in terms of the development of other standards. Essentially he establishes that Chancery Standard has too much variation to be the only driving force of language standardization. 

[Several of the essays in this volume were cited in Fisiak's work. Upon searching I discovered that the book was actually available in the HBLL and should be shelved next to Fisiak. It was nowhere to be found, but after more searching I discovered that it had fallen back behind the other books so it could not be easily found]

Mitton, Roger, English Spelling and the Computer, Longman press, 1996. 

While not strictly limited to the time before 1500, or really even close, the brief history of English spelling at the beginning is actually quite good and does cover the applicable time frame. Also I know that my blogging group loves to discuss modern technology when we are supposed to be talking about ancient history, so I thought providing a resource that discusses things like automated replacement of erroneous spellings or homonyms would be interesting to them. It was also useful in that it cited several of the sources I had already found verifying their reliability. 

[It is cited by Amberg and Vause and was on the next shelf over]

Scragg, D. G., A History of English Spelling, Manchester University Press, 1974. 

Scragg is cited at least once in every other book I found. It appears that this book is the definitive work on the subject. It explains in great detail different shifts in vowels, consonants, and letter groups from the f v switch around 1070 to the more recent loss of the long s. More detailed than most people would need, but if you have a question this would be the book to refer to. 

[It was cited by almost all the other books, I was able to find the full citation information from Mitton's book at the end with the other references and was then able to find the partial view of it on Google Books]

Knapton, J., R. Knaplock, J. Sprint, D. Midwinter, R. Robinson, W. Innys, and J. Osborne, The Many Advantages of a Good Language to any Nation, Menston Press, 1724. 

This is a highly ironic little book. It is calling for the standardization of the language based on the Port Royalist system but is very clearly not consistent in itself and is certainly not adhering to modern spelling rules. A brief quote (p19) is illustrative "Indeed they were fo for from being without Grammars, that is was a comon Complaint ; and Tully takes not of it,... and that is a likely a true Reafon whey their Grammars are not come down to us today..." The section on spelling is pages 45-63 and is interesting in that is has what they perceived as old and new and alternate spellings. 

[I found this book while searching for Tahern. I find old books very interesting so immediately searched for the portion on spelling, when I found it worthwhile I kept it during my continued search for Tahren]

Bailey, R.W., Images of English: A Cultural History of the Language, University of Michigan Press, 1991.

This focuses on the impact of great authors and key political leaders (like the king and queen) in developing a standard English. He makes the argument that it is more about what we percieve as correct and acceptable than what a council decides is the absolute way to read, write, pronounce, or spell. Bailey emphasizes the point that people's opportunities were limited if they did not conform to the "standard." Other works are quoted extensively and provide good illustration of his points. 

[was cited by Amberg and Vause in the section on how language and culture interrelate, I thought that would be a very interesting topic to learn more about]


I included some of my adventures specific to each book in the bracketed portion of the annotation. I guess this activity was not as foreign to me as it was to some of my classmates. Growing up we were discouraged from ever writing down the exact call number of a book we were looking up. We learned that if we go the first chunk of the call number then all of the books around there would be on the same topic and maybe more useful than the one we had originally wanted. It was actually a very hard transition for me to come to college where much of the research needs to be done on the computer. I had to learn how to navigate that interesting archive system; I was much more comfortable with the set physical version.