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

Ian Collier (imc@comlab.ox.ac.uk)
Mon, 24 Aug 1998 00:32:49 +0100 (BST)


On Sun, 23 Aug 1998 18:52:22 -0400 (EDT), you said:
> Note: "olde English" was not in common use in America. The first American
> dictionary was to be a dictionary of "common use". The replacement of
> "s" with "z" had to do with the number of "s"es already present for
> exactly the reason previously cited.

My point was that most of these words already had "z"s and several others
still have "s"s and were not changed.

However, it is possible that both "ize" and "ise" were common (as they are
now in Britain) and that the dictionary standardised on "ize" (rather than
actually changing the spelling).

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

> This is now done with "kerning" (altering spacing).

Sometimes it is not done at all. I have never seen it done with kerning
(which is not to say that it isn't done, though in my opinion it would look
slightly odd). However, all the best fonts have "ff", "fi", "fl", "ffi" and
"ffl" ligatures.

> I don't have
> any keys on my keyboard to even quote something the way it used to
> be quoted in the '50s. Double quotes started at 66 and ended as 99.

As they still do in most printed texts. (Microsoft would have us believe
that they do in terminal fonts too, although the only genuine ASCII quotes
are single ones like `these'.)

imc

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