(Revised June 10, 2005)

Principles
Controlling the Selection of Words
for the Simpler Spelling Word of the Day Website

Click here for today's word.
Click here for earlier days' entries
Click here for a list of possible future words.

Here, in no necessary order, are some principles that we try to abide by in the Simpler Spelling Word of the Day project ("SSWD"). I have given them numbers to ease referring to one or more in correspondence.
 

  1. The SSWD project is about words that people of normal intelligence — but especially new readers, be they children in English-speaking countries or people learning English as a Second Language — really do have problems with. Moreover, SSWD is concerned with ambiguous or misleading root words, not possible confusions among multitudinous possible derivative forms unless the ambiguous derivative is encountered at least as frequently as, or more fequently than, the root. There are a great many troublesome words that come readily to mind. We don't have to search with a fine-tooth comb thru the entire English language nor the entire conjugation of a verb or comparative forms of an adjective, looking for problems. There are changes we could make just to streamline things a bit (making a doubled final consonant single or dropping a needless silent-E in final position) that might produce a minor saving in writing or typing time and some ink but which are hardly necessary to people's using the language easily. These are the kinds of changes that should be addressed only after all the really ridiculous or confusing spellings have been changed. Such trivial changes are not the thrust of this project.
  2. New spellings must be clearer than old, not equally unclear or even less clear than the traditional spelling. The reforms we offer should so readily accord with commonly understood patterns that no explanation is required. For instance, we should not have to tell people that adding a silent-E at the end of a word after a consonant that follows an OO renders the OO long (e.g., "foole", "foode"). That is not self-evident (compare "Goode"). So if people who know the way English generally works will not instantly perceive a change as clarifying things, we won't offer that change.
  3. Moreover, if there is more than one common way of spelling a given sound,.we will ordinarily opt for the one that people are more likely to guess if they hear a word whose spelling they don't know. For instance, -ER or -ERRY rather than -OR or -URRY. But we won't change well-established spellings from one well-understood pattern to another simply to make it easier for people to guess how a given word is spelled, but offer a reform only if there is some other reason to change the word than to conform one customary way of spelling to another that may or may not be more common and readily understood.
  4. This Project is about (A) reforming irrational spellings that may cause preventable problems for readers (especially new readers) and (B) streamlining cumbersome but otherwise sensible spellings of words that have agreed pronunciations. It is not about (a) indicating better pronunciations (that is, taking sides in pronunciation disputes) nor (b) giving more guidance as to syllabic stress (except possibly where confusion often occurs) nor (c) drawing fine and needless distinctions between words (as of origin or function) that are not reflected in pronunciation. Alphabetic writing is fundamentally about conveying speech sounds in situations where we can't actually convey speech. If we can clearly show the speech sounds and also show useful distinctions, as English often does (read/reed, pray/prey), so much the better.
  5. SSWD will not offer arbitrary changes simply to show that words of one type derive from different roots than words of similar sound (for instance, rewriting tomato as tamato to distinguish from words like today and together). There are many elements, such as -ER as an agent ending (reader), -ER as a suffix of comparison (better), and -ER as an integral part of a word (gender) that do not need to be distinguished on that account alone.
  6. If silent letters can be dropped or any other change toward greater phoneticity can be made with no loss of clarity, we will suggest change. But we endeavor not to create new homographs (words spelled the same that have different meanings, tho not always different pronunciations), if that is at all avoidable. We want to simplify and clarify English, to make it easier to use, not harder. We also want to minimize resistance from the educational and publishing Establishments to the idea of simplifying spelling.
  7. We will not attempt to "flip" existing words, that is, apply a phonetic spelling now in use for one word to a different word altogether, and apply a new spelling to the clear spelling already in use. For instance, we will not propose that "bred", past tense of "breed", which is perfectly phonetic as-is, be applied instead to "bread", and a new spelling, "bredd", be applied to the original word "bred". Nor will we try to institute "fuel" for "fool" (to make plain that the present OO represents a long vowel as in "food", not short, as in "good"), because "fuel" is a present word, pronounced fyuel. We won't try to reform "fuel" to "fule" or "fyuel" to free up "fuel" for "fool". Readers could not know whether they are dealing with old spelling or new spelling, and we want to make English clearer and easier to use, not more confusing and thus harder to use.
  8. SSWD in general does not tell people who use one common pronunciation (e.g., capsuel for "capsule", edyookaet for "educate") that what they're saying is wrong. That breeds offense, and resistance to spelling reform. We don't need to accommodate rare deviations from a speech norm, and can in a very few cases indicate that some pronunciations are illiterate (e.g., ev-er-y for "every"), but aside from egregious cases, SSWD is about reforms that show standard pronunciations clearly and efficiently, as by dropping needless letters.
  9. Reformed spellings for the SSWD page must accommodate all major alternative pronunciations, of all major dialects/speech communities. For instance, "atmosferic" allows both common pronunciations -feeric and (mainly British) -feric. British and British-influenced dialects account for some 30% of the world's native speakers of English, and we want to bring them along in spelling reform, not antagonize them into thinking this is some kind of arrogant, American linguistic imperialism. Only if the (North) American great majority of all native speakers of "English" declare total independence from "English" and tell Brits that we will no longer accommodate them to any degree could we disregard their sensibilities. Such a separation is perhaps implied by the suggestion from some spelling reformers that we reform the very name of the language to "Inglish" -- tho SSWD does not generally direct itself to proper nouns -- and proclaim that the I in that respelling represents "international" (world language), distinct from the "E" of the traditional spelling of the language's name, which implicitly ties the language to "England". But snapping the English-speaking world in two is not the purpose of the SSWD project, which strives to draw the attention of people across the entire English-speaking world to commonsense reforms we could all make to our mutual advantage.
  10. The SSWD project favors smaller changes rather than larger, on the supposition that more people will be more inclined to object the further we go from a traditional spelling while achieving no greater clarity. For instance, SSWD favors atmosfere over atmasfere. (See principle #11, below, as to this particular choice.) Let's get rid of the really objectionable spellings first and worry about relatively petty matters later, or reserve them to a systematic, radical reform that insists on a single way of spelling each phoneme.
  11. If the current spelling doesn't cause confusion or waste memory on needless deviations from the norm, we might eventually propose a change that would make it more consistent with other words or spelling conventions for similar sounds, but not as a priority. In this class fall many words that might be clearer if a consonant were doubled (e.g., ellement, ennemy) but which are not generally perceived to cause problems. We will not, however, attempt to eliminate well-established patterns that do not cause problems, for instance, changing all EA's that sound like long-E, to EE, nor all -OR endings to -ER, nor change "rain" to "rane".
  12. Since any vowel can be schwaed (that is, reduced in duration and revised in quality to a neutral vowel sound, like the second-E in telephone, A in about, and U in circus), we will not propose substituting one vowel for another to represent schwa. An O in atmosfere is fine; changing it to A is neither necessary nor advisable, because each change you make to any given word provides opponents of spelling reform a further chance to object.
  13. SSWD will avoid exchanging one odd spelling for another (e.g., "llokh" for "loch"). Especially is that the case if, as with a change from "loch" to "lokh", it would create a new homograph in some large English-speaking community ("Lokh Sabha" is the name of the lower house of India's national parliament).  Sometimes it's a close call. For instance, tho one could make a case that woodd is better than would, there is not a single word in the entire English language that ends in oodd. A Google search reveals a relatively small number of hits for "Woodd" as a surname (9,370 as against, for instance, 939,000 — 100 times as many — for "redd", our proposed reform for the past and past participle of "read"). We're not convinced that people in general will regard "woodd" as so much better a spelling than "would" as to make a change, especially inasmuch as there is no other word with which "would" can be confused, and any spelling change will be perceived as walling off, in some degree, one generation from those that went before.
  14. Shorter spellings will be easier for most people to accept than longer, so we choose words that add letters only if that will achieve a significant gain in clarity.
  15. The changes we propose must work with grammatical endings, according to regular rules.  Changing "buzz" to "buz" wouldn't be worth doing, because it loses its second-Z only in the singular and root verb form. If you pluralize it (buzzes), add an agent ending (buzzer), or create the third-person singular (buzzes), past (buzzed), or progressive (buzzing), you're right back where you started. So there's no point to changing the root to begin with.
  16. We will not alter grammatical endings: no Z for S in the plural or possessive; no -D or -T for -ED endings; no -EE for -AE plurals from Latin (antennae, larvae). It might eventually be wise to do so, but nothing is more certain to rouse the fury of educators than screwing around with grammatical endings. We hope to win educators and publishers to the cause of making English easier for the entire world, English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries alike. We're not out to antagonize them needlessly.
  17. Nor will we propose reforms that would needlessly break related words apart (verb from noun, noun from adjective, inflected form from root). For instance, we will not suggest "purrfect" for the adjectival and noun form of "perfect" just to show that syllabic stress falls on the first syllable, tho "perrfect" might be accepted, since the tie to "perfect" remains plain. Since there are word pairs distinguished by syllabic stress that can confuse readers, we might propose reforms to clarify such pairs, but not as a general rule. Even if we do, we will ordinarily propose that the change be made to the less-common form, not the more-common.
  18. SSWD offers reforms that stick to an established pattern of spelling, when possible. We don't attempt to initiate a new way of spelling, for instance egzample, lugzhurious, eksit or -shon, -shun, -shan, -chon, -chan, or -chun for -tion, -sion, or -ssion endings; nor NN for nasalization of the preceding vowel ("hunn?" for "huh?", which is ordinarily nasalized). We might, however, suggest that needless variations be standardized to the most common way of spelling things: e.g., "emitions" rather than "emissions" — especially in that the root word is "emit", not "emiss").
  19. Words that follow a consistent pattern from which there are few or no exceptions do not need to be changed even if, absent such a pattern, their spelling might be ambiguous. The pattern makes the pronunciation plain. For instance, the family bingo, dingo, lingo, and flamingo has an NG-sound followed by a hard-G, so might better be spelled binggo, dinggo, linggo, and flaminggo. But this is not a priority, because there are no exceptions to the rule, and people can cope with a consistent pattern. It's exceptions we target. "Are" does not conform to the pattern bare, care, dare, fare, stare, etc., so we suggest "ar" instead. We do not attempt to change the main pattern, as to bair, cair, dair, fair, stair — and especially would we not do so if that would create bunches of needless new homographs, such as "fair" and "stair" in this example.
  20. To the extent possible, SSWD will avoid reforms that "look funny" or "un-English", and instead offer spellings that accord with some well-understood existing pattern. But some people's idea of "looking funny" is other people's idea of looking right or smart, not stupid, whereas stupid is the way a lot of current spelling looks to them — and to most of us, for that matter. Especially is this the case for people learning English as a Second Language. They might prefer "un-English" spellings that make eminently better sense.
  21. We can't eliminate all ambiguity in English without a systematic reform, like Fanetik. Sometimes you just have to leave things as they are,
  22. SSWD is mainly about common words, not rare words, and not about words regarded as offensive or vulgar, but words that are part of the general vocabulary used in polite company. This project is directed largely at students, so will avoid words or subelements that are likely to induce snickers or embarrassment among kids.
  23. Words that are regarded as "foreign", even if now commonly heard in English-speaking countries, would probably be better understood in their original spelling, and many people will see no reason to change them at this point. Into this category fall many words for foods from Mexican and other cuisines, such as burrito, quesadilla, fajita and mille-feuille.
  24. Scientific terms constitute an entire category of words that we should change only if they become commonly used (psychology) and cause trouble in their present spellings (leucocyte/leukocyte), since science is transnational and translingual, and much of the International Scientific Vocabulary is intended to be instantly recognizable across languages. Nor is it always plain when subelements of enormously long chemical names retain their full speech values as against when they might be altered to a more informal pronunciation among the in-group that deals with them regularly. Some scientists are happy to permit 'the great unwashed' to attempt to understand newly announced findings, but others feel diminished if just anyone can pronounce the polysyllables they use to proclaim a new scientific truth. They prefer that those who are not among 'the ordained' be incapable of pronouncing the magic words of science. Nonscientists should decide rules for the pronunciation of scientific terms only if they have entered the realm of words everyone is expected to know.
  25. We are not concerned with imitative sounds that are scarcely regarded as real words ("eh", "oops" and the like), so we will avoid such proposed spellings.
  26. English is uncomfortable with words consisting of vowels only, such as "oo" for "ooh" and "ae" for eh", so we will likely avoid such proposals.
  27. We are not dealing with capitalization in the SSWD project, changing initial capitals to lower case (e.g., Popsicle, Kleenex, Email). That's not a spelling reform but a matter of usage, and in some cases, a matter of trademarks.
  28. We are not, for the most part, concerned with eliminating hyphens (yo-yo, simple-minded, e-mail), which is more a matter of grammar and punctuation rather than spelling. Some people regard such hyphens as needless. Others think a hyphen clarifies things. Ordinarily, people can just drop a hyphen and leave the words or elements separate or, equally, shove them together with no space nor punctuation, as they prefer. If that produces ambiguity (as some people might see "yoyo"(parallel to slang "boyo", for "boy"), it's probably better simply to leave the hyphen in place rather than revise the spelling (e.g., yoeyo or yohyo).
  29. Nor is SSWD concerned about changing phrases into compound words, so we don't have to worry about what to do with phrases like "no one".
  30. Nor are we changing most proper nouns: surnames, personal names, placenames, trademarks, etc.
  31. There's only so much that spelling can accomplish. People who are say "avenue" without a Y-glide in the last syllable or "coupon" with a Y-glide before the U-sound are going to say that no matter how we spell it. There's no Y in "coupon", nor any reason to see a Y-sound as intrinsic to the word, but some people sneak one into it anyway. People who say a.sés.a.re for "accessory" are going to say that even if we respell it, in un-English fashion, "aksessory". They will simply ignore or indignantly reject prescriptivist spellings that do not accord with the way they hear and say a given word, no matter how many cues others, from outside their group, may give them that the "proper" pronunciation is something else. Since that is true, there's no reason to adopt un-English ways of spelling just to provide more guidance to people who will accept no guidance.
  32. Derivatives and inflected forms are implied to take the same pattern as the base word, according to regular rules of affixation. For instance, if the word "giv" is shown, all forms of that word are implied, and since the vowel is short, doubling the consonant before adding suffixes is also implied: giv, givs, giving or givving (not everyone sees -ing as requiring a doubling of the final consonant), givven, givver (since an ending that starts with E will ordinarily be seen as implying a long vowel in the syllable before, absent a doubled consonant), etc. Likewise, a reformed adjective implies a reformed adverb if -ly can be added (obveus/ly), etc.
  33. SSWD generally addresses only root words and irregular derivatives. The fact that almost any one-syllable and some longer adjectives can take comparative (-er) and superlative (-est) forms that might be confusing even tho the base word is clear, is insufficient reason to alter the base word. Only if the comparative or superlative form is extremely common in itself, of the magnitude of, say, "better" and "best" or "more" and "most", would such an alternate form justify respelling the base. In the case of these examples, however, the words are already hugely different from the word they relate to ("good" and either "much" or "many"). In the rare case when a comparative form really might be confusing (e.g., "truest" or "freer", it is the grammatically varied form that needs reform, as by inserting a W- or Y-glide: "truewer", "freeyer". Since such derivatives are far from ubiquitous, we need not address that issue in this project.
  34. SSWD will not propose respellings solely for "politically correct" purposes, such as offering "woomun" for the traditional spelling "woman" because some radical feminists want to break that word away from "man". We like the English language, for the most part. We do not regard the language itself, but only its insanely irrational and inconsistent spelling, as our enemy. And we hope to ameliorate its orthographic madness by the smallest changes that would make it minimally consistent and thus easy to use.

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Spelling simplification isn't simple.

It takes a lot of thought and an electronic dictionary with a wildcard function so you can look for parallels and conflicts. But it is worth doing, because English is very hard to use due to its preposterous spelling. English-speaking countries spend quadrillions of student-hours teaching kids to read and write, and still end up with a significant portion of people who are functionally illiterate or only barely literate. Students of English as a foreign language in non-English-speaking countries have a very hard time dealing with inconsistencies between words they do not hear every day. They also generally have a hard time dealing with the fact that English uses ways of spelling that do not jibe with "Continental" values employed in most languages spelled in the roman alphabet. But they can adjust to the fact that we spell long-A with an A, not E, and long-E with an E, not I, as long as the spelling is consistent!

Absent a systematic reform (like Fanetik), English will never be completely consistent, but we can get rid of much of the inconsistency almost painlessly, in ways the SSWD website shows.

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Click here for earlier days' entries
Click here for a list of possible future words.