Spell it out : the curious, enthralling, and extraordinary story of English spelling / David Crystal.

Previously published by London : Profile Books, 2012.

Includes Index.

The nature of the problem: Pooh and his friends on spelling -- The beginning -- The size of the problem -- Building the alphabet: letter origins -- The basic weaknesses: hope for us all -- Keeping things long: more than letters -- Keeping things short: spelling as tragedy -- The first exceptions -- Seeing the link: forensic spelling -- Know your Latin and French: spelling as reputation -- New letters for old -- Old letters in new words: Tarzan learns to read -- Old sounds in new positions: spelling as stratagem -- New sounds in old places -- More exceptions: avoiding the vulgar -- Showing the difference: Charles Dickens and his characters reflect upon spelling -- Noting the similarity: silent letters -- New sounds in old letters -- A printer's practice: Mark Twain on spelling -- The urge to reform: George Bernard Shaw on spelling -- Remembering Latin -- More etymologies: a word I always mispell -- Famous spellings -- Spelling 'rules': Mrs Malaprop on reading and spelling -- The role of personalities -- Another personality -- Printers and publishers: spelling wars -- Changing practices: Roger McGough on spelling -- The internet: lower case only -- Showing identity -- Unpredictability: Ogden Nash on names -- Exotic vowels: disenvowelling -- Exotic consonants: the spread of education -- Spelling noises: unspellable noises -- Abbreviating -- Learning the system: George Crabbe on learning -- The future of English spelling -- A teaching appendix -- Avoiding isolation -- Towards a linguistics of spelling.

With The Story of English in 100 Words, David Crystal took us on a tour through the history of our language. Now, with Spell It Out, he takes on the task of answering all the questions about how we spell: "Why is English spelling so difficult?" Or "Why are good spellers so proud of their achievement that when they see a misspelling they condemn the writer as sloppy, lazy, or uneducated?" In thirty-seven short, engaging and informative chapters, Crystal takes readers on a history of English spelling, starting with the Roman missionaries' sixth century introduction of the Roman alphabet and ending with where the language might be going. He looks individually at each letter in the alphabet and its origins. He considers the question of vowels and how people developed a way to tell whether or not it was long or short. He looks at influences from other cultures, and explains how English speakers understood that the "o" in "hopping" was a short vowel, rather than the long vowel of "hoping". If you've ever asked yourself questions like "Why do the words "their", "there" and "they're" sound alike, but mean very different things?" or "How can we tell the difference between "charge" the verb and "charge" the noun?" David Crystal's Spell It Out will spell it all out for you. AMAZON

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