On Sun, Oct 02, 2011 at 02:37:34PM +0100, Terence wrote: > On 2 October 2011 13:57, Stephen Powell <zlinux...@wowway.com> wrote: > > > ~ I suspect that different national bodies convened to > > decide on standardized spelling, and the two organizations occasionally > > picked different standard spellings for the same word. That's why > > there are separate spelling dictionaries for British English and > > American English. > > There never has been a single point of authority for spelling (or, > indeed, grammar) in English (unlike the French Academy which has > sought to standardise French) and it was only after the great Doctor > produced his "Dictionary of the English Language" that spelling began > to become standardised. That was, IIRC, 1755, and was followed by > others, including Ash who produced his in 1775.
Really? My understanding was that it was William Caxton, through the development of the printing press in the 1470s, who began the standardisation of spelling. By being able to produce thousands of copies of a work, all identically spelled, he was able to exert much wider authority than previously. -- Darac Marjal
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