Christian Monks adapted the Latin alphabet to English in the 6th century. The Normans brought more changes in pronunciation and sounds, along with suffixes, spelling practices, and analogies. The Great Vowel Shift occurred in the 15th century and altered the character of English spelling forever and increased spelling irregularities. In […]
History
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The Latin alphabet had been adapted to English by Christian Monks in the 6th century. The Norman arrival, with their French influence, brought more changes in pronunciation and sounds, along with suffixes, spelling practices, exceptions and analogies. In the 15th century, The Great Vowel Shift occurred and altered the character of […]
Punctuation Day is celebrated every year on September 24th. Punctuation hasn’t changed much since 1500 (except for the introduction of computers). With the publication of the Guttenberg bible, printing had arrived and required standardized punctuation. Within 50 years that was achieved. […]
With the arrival of Christian Christian monks in the 6th century England, they wrote down the Anglo-Saxon language, adapting the Latin alphabet to English, adding extra letters for all the sounds. The arrival of the Normans, with their French influence, affected pronunciation and spelling practices. In his book, SPELL IT […]
In writing down the Anglo-Saxon language, Christian monks adapted the Latin alphabet to English, adding extra letters for all the sounds. The arrival of the Normans and their French scribes with their spelling conventions introduced many changes in vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling. The French scribes opted to keep the spelling […]
(I’m posting this now because Thursday September 8th is also International Literacy Day. National Ampersand Day is celebrated on September 8th every year to acknowledge this terrific little symbol. Its creation has been attributed to individuals from Roman orator Cicero’s secretary Tiro to 19th century French physicist and mathematician Andre-Marie […]
With the arrival of Christian monks in England in the 6th century, they discovered several kingdoms speaking dialects of a Germanic language brought from the Continent a century before. In his book SPELL IT OUT: The Singular Story of English Spelling, David Crystal explains that in writing down the Anglo-Saxon […]
In his delightful and informative book, SPELL IT OUT: The Singular Story of English Spelling, David Crystal explains many of the quirks and anomalies of spelling English words. He says that with well over one million words in English, affected in myriad ways by 1300 years of history, the task […]
Today is National Paperback Book Day. Surprise: who knew it was so interesting? Believe it or not, Charles Dickens is credited with the creation of the mass- market paperback that is ubiquitous today. I wrote a prequel to today’s celebration where I gave a shortened version of a lecture by […]
In prepping a blog for National Paperback Day on July 30th, I stumbled across an accounting of how Charles Dickens is credited as being the creator of the paperback book—though of course, they didn’t call them that then. Dr. Elliot Engle has taught at North Carolina State University, written plays, […]