A history of the English Language

putt, grubb, ledd
for 
put, grub, led,
“and a thowsand such ignorant 
superfluities.” On the other hand, we must not omit necessary letters such as the 
t
in 
fetch
or 
scratch
. He allows double consonants only where they belong to separate syllables 
(wit-ting),
and almost never at the end of a word except in the case of 
ll (tall, generall)
. 
Words ending in -
ss
he writes -
sse (glasse, confesse)
. Otherwise final -
e
is used regularly 
to indicate a preceding long vowel, distinguishing 
made
from 
mad, stripe
from 
strip,
and 
at the end of words ending in the sound of 
v
or 
z (deceive, love, wise)
. An 
e
is added to 
words that end in a lightly pronounced 
i: daie, maie, trewlie, safetie;
but when the 
i
is 
sounded “loud and sharp” it is spelled 
y: deny, cry, defy
. Analogy, or as he calls it, 
“proportion,” plays a justly important part in his system. Since we write 
hear,
we should 
therefore write 
fear
and 
dear
. This principle, he admits, is subject to exceptions that must 
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be made in deference to “prerogative,” that is, the right of language to continue a 
common custom, as in employing an analogous spelling for 
where, here, there
. In such a 
case he becomes frankly the apologist, justifying the common practice. He is really more 
interested in having everyone adopt the same spelling for a given word than he is in 
phonetic consistency. It is not so much a question of whether one should write 
where
as 
that one should adopt a single spelling and use it regularly instead of writing 
where, 
wher, whear, wheare, were, whair,
etc. To this end he prints in the latter part of his book 
a 
General Table
giving the recommended spelling for some 7,000 of the most common 
words. Mulcaster’s spelling is not always the one that ultimately came to be adopted. In 
spite of his effort for the most part to follow current usage, he seems sometimes to have 
gone counter to the tendency of his own and later times. He advocates spelling 
guise, 
guide, guest,
and the like without the 
u
and writes 
b
ă
ble, d
ă
ble,
indicating the length of 
the vowel by a short mark over it. But his book had the great merit—or demerit—of 
standardizing a large number of current spellings, justifying them, and advocating the 
consistent use of them. 
It is impossible to say how influential Mulcaster’s work was. The effect of his precepts 
seems to be evident in certain later writers. Ben Jonson quotes from him, often without 
acknowledgment. That English spelling developed along the lines laid down by him is 
certain, but this may have been due largely to the fact that it was already developing 
along these lines and would have done so even without the help of his book. 
During the first half of the next century the tendency toward uniformity increased 
steadily. The fixation of English spelling is associated in most people’s minds with the 
name of Dr. Johnson, and a statement in the preface of his dictionary, published in 1755, 
might lend color to this idea. In reality, however, our spelling in its modern form had 
been practically established by about 1650. In 
The New World of English Words
published in 1658 by Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips, the compiler says: “As for 
orthography, it will not be requisite to say any more of it then may conduce to the readers 
direction in the finding out of words,” and he adds two or three remarks about Latin 
prae-
being rendered in English by 
pre-,
and the like. Otherwise he seemed to think that the 
subject did not call for any discussion. And in reality it did not. The only changes we 
should make in the sentence just quoted are in the spelling 
then
(for 
than
) and the 
addition of an apostrophe in 
readers
. A closer scrutiny of the preface as a whole
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would 
reveal a few other differences such as an occasional 
e
where we have dropped it 
(kinde), 
ll
and 
sse
at the end of words 
(gratefull, harshnesse), 
-
ick
for -
ic (logick),
and a 
contracted form of the past participle 
(authoriz’d, chanc’t)
. Even these differences are not 
very noticeable. Spelling was one of the problems that the English language began 
consciously to face in the sixteenth century. During the period from 1500 to 1650 it was 
fairly settled.
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