{"id":22506,"date":"2022-10-26T13:20:25","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T13:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22506"},"modified":"2022-10-26T13:20:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T13:20:26","slug":"miss-pelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=22506","title":{"rendered":"Miss Pelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I was asked to share a post about The Most Misspelled English Word in Every Country and State, Based on Two Billion Tweets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

However, on a list of the 100 Most Commonly Misspelled Words<\/a> on YourDictionary.com, foreign<\/strong> and miniscule<\/strong> do appear, but coolly<\/strong> and promise<\/strong> don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Miniscule<\/strong> is in fact a \u201cdisputed spelling variant of minuscule<\/strong>\u201d, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary<\/a>. It as been around since the late 19th century and often appears in print, although is \u201cwidely regarded as an error\u201d.<\/p>\n

This got me thinking – if a word is widely misspelled \/ misspelt*, is this a sign of language change? Maybe one day the misspelling will be accepted as an alternative way to spell the word, or even as the standard way to spell it.<\/p>\n

*misspelt<\/strong> is used in the UK, though has become less widely-used since the 1970s, while misspelled<\/strong> is used in most English-speaking countries, including the UK [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

English spelling is not entirely fixed, and some words may have more than one standard spelling, particularly in different varieties of English.<\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia<\/a>, \u201cSpelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form … Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standardized \/ standardised spelling is a relatively recent phenomenon that developed along with dictionaries, universal education, literacy and language academies. It is enforced by teachers, proofreaders, editors and pedants.<\/p>\n

In the past, spelling was very much a matter of personal choice. For example, there are six known signatures written by William Shakespeare, each of which is spelled differently: Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, Wm Shakspe, William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere and William Shakspeare [source<\/a>]. In printed works his name appears as Shake\u2011speare, Shake\u017fpeare, Shak\u2011speare and Shake\u017fpere. The Shakespeare spelling became popular from the 1860s [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Does spelling matter?<\/p>\n

It does, at least in formal writing. In informal writing, it may not be so important, as long as your message is clear. In fact, non-standard spellings might be preferred in some contexts. They are certainly a popular way to make brandnames distinct – Kwik Fit, Krispy Kreme, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I was asked to share a post about The Most Misspelled English Word in Every Country and State, Based on Two Billion Tweets. However, on a list of the 100 Most Commonly Misspelled Words on YourDictionary.com, foreign and miniscule do appear, but coolly and promise don\u2019t. Miniscule is in fact a \u201cdisputed spelling variant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,18,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-literacy","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22509,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506\/revisions\/22509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}