Re: [VERY OFFTOPIC] Boring dissertation on English / American languages..

Ian Collier (imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk)
Sun, 23 Aug 1998 21:16:28 +0100 (BST)


On Fri, 21 Aug 1998 16:43:30 -0400 (EDT), Richard B. Johnson said:
> One of the reasons the common spellings of words like
> realise were changed to realize was to prevent printers from
> spelling it like realife as they cheated to minimize
> (minimife) the number of movable type.

This sounds slightly unlikely, since, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary
says, the "-ize" suffix has been in use since the 16th century and is
not an "Americanism"; also, I don't think words such as advertise, surprise
or exercise have ever been spelled with a "z" (that's "zed" (-: ).

> combined letters such as "ae" and "fl" continued in
> British English up until the First World War when type-
> writers came into vogue. Typewriters forced a considerable
> change in British English spelling, although early British
> Typewriters had the "ae" letter, one of the diphthongs.

The letters "fl" are of course still ligatured today when they appear in
print, in both English and American texts. Also "fi" and "ff".

imc

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