English-language spelling reform: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:52, 30 March 2025

Revision as of 19:23, 30 March 2025

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==Historical and contemporary advocates of reform==

{{more citations needed|section|date=August 2022}}

Many [[Wikipedia:Notability (people)|notable]], respected and influential people have been active supporters of spelling reform. This list of English-language spelling reform advocates who are [[Wikipedia:Notability (people)|notable]] for other reasons is split up into those who advocated for specific reforms and were successful, those who were not (yet), and those who instead supported the principle of reform more generally.

{{list missing criteria|date=August 2022}}

Many [[Wikipedia:Notability (people)|notable]], respected and influential people have been active supporters of spelling reform. This list is split up into those who advocated for specific reforms and were successful, those who were not (yet), and those who instead supported the principle of reform more generally.

=== Successful reform proposers ===

* [[James Howell]] recommended minor spelling changes in his ''Grammar'' of 1662, such as 'logique' to 'logic', 'warre' to 'war', 'sinne' to 'sin', 'toune' to 'town' and 'tru' to 'true',<ref name="wijk" />{{rp|18}} many of which are now in general use.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Iamartino |first=Giovanni |date=2003-01-01 |title=More is too much when fewer will serve&#39;: James Howell as a spelling reformer in 17th-century England |url=https://www.academia.edu/530237/More_is_too_much_when_fewer_will_serve_James_Howell_as_a_spelling_reformer_in_17th_century_England |journal=The Standardizing of English. Tenth national congress …}}</ref>

* [[Samuel Johnson]], poet, wit, essayist, biographer, critic and eccentric, broadly credited with the standardization of English spelling in his [https://web.archive.org/web/20060901063613/http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html ''Dictionary of the English Language'' (1755)].

* [[Noah Webster]], author of the first important American dictionary, believed that Americans should adopt simpler spellings where available and recommended it in his [[s:A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language|''A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language'']] [[s:A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language|(1806)]].

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=== Unsuccessful reform proposers ===

* [[Ormulum|Orm/OrrminOrrm]], 12th century Augustine canon monk and eponymous author of the ''[[Ormulum]]'', in which he stated that, since he dislikes that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously. He distinguished short vowels from long by doubling the following consonants, or, where this is not feasible, by marking the short vowels with a superimposed [[breve]] accent.

* [[William Bullokar]] was a schoolmaster who published his book ''English Grammar'' in 1586, an early book on that topic. He published his proposal ''Booke at large for the Amendment of English Orthographie'' in 1580.<ref name="wijk" />{{rp|17}}

* [[John Wilkins]], founder of the [[Royal Society]], early proponent of [[decimalisation]] and a brother-in-law to [[Oliver Cromwell]], developed a system of "double writing".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Poole |first=William |date=2018-01-24 |title=Seventeenth-Century ‘double writing’ schemes, and a 1676 letter in the phonetic script and real character of John Wilkins |url=https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2017.0041 |journal=Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science |volume=72 |issue=1 |pages=7–23 |doi=10.1098/rsnr.2017.0041 |pmc=5906426 |pmid=31390391}}</ref>

* [[Charles Butler (beekeeper)|Charles Butler]], British naturalist and author of the first natural history of bees: ''Đe Feminin' Monarķi'', 1634. He proposed that "men should write altogeđer according to đe sound now generally received", and espoused a system in which the h in digraphs was replaced with [[Bar (diacritic)|bars]].

* [[Benjamin Franklin]], American innovator and revolutionary, added letters to the Roman alphabet for [[Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet|his own personal solution]] to the problem of English spelling.

* [[Mont Follick]], [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] [[Member of Parliament]], [[Linguistics|linguist]] (multi-lingual) and author who preceded [[James Pitman|Pitman]] in drawing the English spelling reform issue to the attention of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]]. Favored replacing w and y with u and i.{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}

* [[Ronald Kingsley Read]], creator of the [[Shavian alphabet]], [[Quikscript]] and Readspel.

* [[Mont Follick]], [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] [[Member of Parliament]], [[Linguistics|linguist]] (multi-lingual) and author who preceded [[James Pitman|Pitman]] in drawing the English spelling reform issue to the attention of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]]. Favored replacing w and y with u and i.

* [[Robert R. McCormick]] (1880–1955), publisher of the [[Chicago Tribune|''Chicago Tribune'']], employed reformed spelling in his newspaper. The ''Tribune'' used simplified versions of some words, such as "altho" for "although".

* [[EdwardJohn RondthalerC. Wells]] (1905–2009), commercialformer actor, chairmanprofessor of the[[phonetics]] at [[AmericanUniversity LiteracyCollege CouncilLondon]], andis a former vice-president of theThe [[English Spelling Society]] and advocated for [[SoundSpel|New Spelling]].

* [[JohnValerie C. WellsYule]], London-basedclinical phonetician,child [[Esperanto]]psychologist teacher,and former professorfellow of [[phonetics]] atthe [[UniversityGalton College LondonInstitute]], and pastwas vice-president of The English [[Spelling Society and created [[Interspel]].

* [[Doug Everingham]], doctor, former Australian Labor politician, and health minister in the [[Whitlam]] government, author of ''Chemical Shorthand for Organic Formulae'' (1943), andwas a proponent of the proposed [[SR1]], which he used in ministerial correspondence.

* [[Valerie Yule]], a fellow of the [[Galton Institute]], vice-president of The English [[Spelling Society]] and founder of the [[Australian Centre for Social Innovations]].

* [[Isaac Asimov]], author, wrote several essays on spelling reform in which he proposed respelling all word-final [[Lexical set|{{Sc2|GOOSE}}]] as {{Angle brackets|oo}}, {{Angle brackets|night}} as {{Angle brackets|nite}} and reforming grammar as well.<ref name=":2" />

* [[Doug Everingham]], doctor, former Australian Labor politician, health minister in the [[Whitlam]] government, author of ''Chemical Shorthand for Organic Formulae'' (1943), and a proponent of the proposed [[SR1]], which he used in ministerial correspondence.

* [[Harry Lindgren]], creator of [[SR1]].

=== Reform advocates ===

* [[Thomas Smith (diplomat)|Thomas Smith]], a secretary of state to [[Queen Elizabeth I]], who published his proposal ''De recta et emendata linguæ angliæ scriptione'' in 1568, which advocates for spelling reform while not detailing its own system.<ref name="wijk" />{{rp|17}}

* [[Isaac Pitman]] developed the most widely used system of [[shorthand]], known now as [[Pitman Shorthand]], first proposed in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' (1837).

* [[Theodore Roosevelt]] commissioned a committee, the [[Columbia Spelling Board]], to research and recommend simpler spellings and tried to require the U.S. government to adopt them;<ref name="NYT1906">{{cite news |date=1906-12-13 |title=House Bars Spelling in President's Style |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1906/12/13/101853127.pdf |access-date=2007-12-17 |work=New York Times}}</ref> however, his approach, to assume popular support by [[Executive order (United States)|executive order]],<ref name="NYT1906" /> rather than to garner it, was a likely factor in the limited change of the time.<ref>{{cite web |author=John J. Reilly |title=Theodore Roosevelt and Spelling Reform |url=http://www.johnreilly.info/alt20.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070707171609/http://www.johnreilly.info/alt20.htm |archive-date=2007-07-07 |access-date=2007-07-07}} Based on H.W. Brand's, T.R.: The Last Romantic, pp. 555-558</ref><ref>{{cite web |author=Daniel R. MacGilvray |year=1986 |title=A Short History of GPO |url=http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/history/macgilvray.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070608191329/http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/history/macgilvray.html |archive-date=2007-06-08 |access-date=2007-07-07}}</ref>

* [[Ronald Regan]] supported reform in his youth, and retained some simplified spellings even when in office, such as "bellys", "mysterys", "nite", "burocrat", "burocracy".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morris |first=Edmund |title=Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan |date=1999 |publisher=[[Modern Library]] |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-375-75645-0}}</ref>

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* [[Isaac Pitman]], creator of [[Pitman shorthand]], was also a founding member of the English Spelling Reform Association.<ref name=":3" />

* [[Alexander John Ellis]], philologist, was also a founding member of the English Spelling Reform Association.<ref name=":3" />

* [[John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury]], close friend, neighbor and colleague of Charles Darwin, also involved in the Spelling Reform Association.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mencken |first=H. L. |url=https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/the-american-language-2nd-ed/page-243-2/ |title=The American Language |date=1921 |pages=243}}</ref>

* [[Andrew Carnegie]], celebrated philanthropist, donated to spelling reform societies on the US and Britain, and funded the [[Simplified Spelling Board]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Simplified Spelling Society Minutes |url=https://spellingsociety.org/uploaded_newsletters/earlyminutes-newsletter.pdf |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>

* [[Daniel Jones (phonetician)|Daniel Jones]], phonetician. and professor of [[phonetics]] at [[University College London]], was a president of the Simplified Spelling Society.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Simplified Spelling Society Presidents, and Officers and Committee Members, between 1908 and 1987 |url=https://www.spellingsociety.org/uploaded_newsletters/officers-newsletter.pdf |access-date= |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>

* [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[playwright]], willed part of his estate to fund the creation of what would become the [[Shavian alphabet]].

* [[Mark Twain]], author and humorist, was a founding member of the [[Simplified Spelling Board]].<ref name="NYT19060306">[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F02E5D6103EE733A25751C1A9659C946797D6CF&scp=1 "Carnegie Assaults The Spelling Book; To Pay the Cost of Reforming English Orthography. Campaign About To Begin Board Named, with Headquarters Here – Local Societies Throughout the Country."], ''[[The New York Times]]'', March 12, 1906. Accessed August 28, 2008.</ref>

* [[Mark Twain]], a founding member of the Simplified Spelling Board.

* [[H. G. Wells]], science fiction writer, became a one-time vice president of the Simplified Spelling Society after granting permission to publish one of his short stories in reformed spelling.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Notes on the Pamphlets of The Spelling Society |url=https://www.spellingsociety.org/uploaded_pamphlets/pnotes-pamphlet.pdf |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>

* [[Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell]] was a vice-president of the Simplified Spelling Society.<ref>{{Cite web |title=THE PIONEER OF SIMPLIFIED SPELLING |url=https://www.spellingsociety.org/uploaded_newsletters/1918pioneer-newsletter-1420047469.pdf |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>

* [[Upton Sinclair]], author, wrote a letter to Theodore Roosevelt advocating for spelling reform.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sinclair |first=Upton |date=1976 |title=Upton Sinclair Cites Need For Spelling Reform In Letter To President Kennedy |url=https://www.spellingsociety.org/uploaded_books/a2arguments.pdf}}</ref>

* [[Melvil Dewey]], inventor of the [[Dewey Decimal Classification|Dewey Decimal System]], wrote published works in simplified spellings and even simplified his own name from ''Melville'' to ''Melvil''.<ref>{{Cite journal |date=1876 |title=The Spelling Reform Association |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44765879 |journal=New England Journal of Education |volume=4 |issue=10 |pages=115–115 |issn=2578-4145}}</ref>

* [[Israel Gollancz]], philologist, was a founding member of the Simplified Spelling Society.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Simplified Spelling Society. Newsletter July 1983 |url=https://www.spellingsociety.org/uploaded_newsletters/news3-newsletter.pdf |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>

* [[James Pitman]], agrandson of [[Isaac Pitman]], publisher and [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]] [[Member of Parliament]], grandson of [[Isaac Pitman]], invented the [[Initial Teaching Alphabet]], which is not technically a spelling reform.

* [[Charles Galton Darwin]], grandson of [[Charles Darwin]], physicist and director of Britain's [[National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)|National Physical Laboratory]] ([[National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)|NPL]]) in [[Second World War|World War II]], was also a wartime vice-president of the [[Simplified Spelling Society]].<ref>{{cite web |title=The Simplified Spelling Society Officers and Committee Members |url=http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/pamflets/officers.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080720143726/http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/pamflets/officers.php |archive-date=20 July 2008 |access-date=27 May 2009 |publisher=The Spelling Society |df=dmy-all}}</ref>

* [[Richard Feynman]], physicist, gave a talk entitled 'This Unscientific Age' in which he advocated for spelling reform, among other things.<ref name=":2">{{cite journal |last=Reilly |first=John J. |date=1999 |title=Richard Feynman & Isaac Asimov on Spelling Reform. |url=http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j25/feynman.php |url-status=dead |journal=Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society |pages=31–32 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050923213512/http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j25/feynman.php |archive-date=2005-09-23}}</ref>

* [[Max Müller]], philologist, published works advocating for spelling reform.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Müller |first=Friedrich Max |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Max_M%C3%BCller_on_Spelling/0vD9AL5jePQC |title=Max Müller on Spelling ... |date=1894 |publisher=I. Pitman & sons |language=en}}</ref>

* [[Isaac Asimov]], author.<ref name=":2" />

* [[Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh]], one-time patron of the [[Simplified Spelling Society]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=Simplified Spelling Society News Sheet 5 |url=https://spellingsociety.org/uploaded_newsletters/ns5-newsletter.pdf |website=English Spelling Society}}</ref> stated that spelling reform should start outside of the UK, and that the lack of progress originates in the discord amongst reformers. However, his abandonment of the cause was coincident with literacy being no longer an issue for his own children, and his less than lukewarm involvement may have ended as a result of the society's rejection of attempts to 'pull strings' behind the scenes.{{Dubious ^{[<nowiki/>[[Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute#Disputed statementdiscuss|''dubious'']]date=March ''–[[Talk:English-language spelling reform#Dubious|discuss]]'']} ^{[<nowiki/>[[Wikipedia:2025}}{{Citation needed|''citationdate=March needed'']]]}2025}}

* [[Max Müller]], philologist.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Müller |first=Friedrich Max |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Max_M%C3%BCller_on_Spelling/0vD9AL5jePQC |title=Max Müller on Spelling ... |date=1894 |publisher=I. Pitman & sons |language=en}}</ref>

* [[Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh]], one-time patron of the [[Simplified Spelling Society]], stated that spelling reform should start outside of the UK, and that the lack of progress originates in the discord amongst reformers. However, his abandonment of the cause was coincident with literacy being no longer an issue for his own children, and his less than lukewarm involvement may have ended as a result of the society's rejection of attempts to 'pull strings' behind the scenes. ^{[<nowiki/>[[Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute#Disputed statement|''dubious'']] ''–[[Talk:English-language spelling reform#Dubious|discuss]]'']} ^{[<nowiki/>[[Wikipedia:Citation needed|''citation needed'']]]}

* [[Anatoly Liberman]], professor in the Department of [[German language|German]], [[Scandinavia|Scandinavian]] and [[Dutch language|Dutch]] at the [[University of Minnesota]], advocated for spelling reforms in his weekly column on word origins at the [[Oxford University Press]] blog.<ref>{{cite web |date=7 May 2014 |title=Casting a last spell: After Skeat and Bradley |url=http://blog.oup.com/2014/05/spelling-reform-after-skeat-and-bradley/ |access-date=9 August 2014 |website=The Oxford Etymologist |publisher=OUP}}</ref> Current president of the [[English Spelling Society]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Officers |url=http://spellingsociety.org/officers |access-date=16 October 2015 |website=The English Spelling Society}}</ref>