The simplified spelling: what it is and what it is not

              TUE SIMPLIFIED  SPELLING
WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
BY HENRY HOYT MOORE
HE reform in English spelling to which wide attention has been drawn by President Roosevelt's order is by no means revolutionary. It does not call for the pho-netization of the language. It does not ask us to alter the spelling of our names, or of the streets on which we live, or of familiar historical characters, or of any of the most frequently used of our every-day words. The many attempts in the daily press, by what might be called the " az iz " or Josh Billings school of humor, to ridicule the movement may have been more or less funny, but they have been beside the mark. Such statements as that " the standard dictionaries will be useless " after the introduction of the changed spelling are absurd. Scarcely a single spelling in the entire list of words concerning which changes are recommended is without dictionary approval. So far as the dictionaries go, the changes are already recognized.
This much may be said without either advocating or opposing the specific changes advised. The facts ought to be understood by every one who wishes to have an intelligent idea of what is really proposed.
The modifications which the Simplified Spelling Board advocates, and which have won the approval of President Roosevelt, are in the direction of a more uniform and less incongruous spelling rather than of a radical reconstruction. The Board does not aim to be an origi- . nator. It recognizes the authority of usage as the final arbiter in spelling, but it believes that usage can be guided, and it seeks to influence usage toward the sanction of the simpler and more phonetic forms of spelling that are now
or have been in vogue. It finds that usage has at times favored a less unpho-netic method of spelling than at present, and it seeks to revive the older usage in such cases. Where current usage permits the use of a simple form in a certain word, as in leapt, it takes the liberty of recommending the use of the same form in an analogous word, as lookt, as a reversion to an older usage favored by Shakespeare, Bunyan, and De Foe. It proposes to drop superfluous letters where there is good authority for doing so, but its appeal at present is primarily to authority. It appeals from the ortho-graphically inebriated Philip to Philip in his soberer linguistic moments, from the Philip who writes tenour and phenomenon to the Philip who writes tenor and phenomenon.
Many of the forms advocated by the Board are not to be regarded as changes even of the accepted American spelling. Probably a majority of Americans have been educated in schools which used Webster's dictionary or spelling book as a standard. Thus as children they wrere perfectly familiar with many of the spellings which the Simplified Spelling Board advocates; such forms, for instance, as traveler instead of traveller, theater instead of theatre, mold instead of mould, defense instead of defence. The Outlook, it may be remarked in passing, has, in common with many other American periodicals, for many years spelled nearly one hundred and fifty of the three hundred wrords affected in accordance with the recommendations of the Simplified Spelling Board. A number of the other changes proposed ought actually to please the adherents of the traditional orthography as reversions to conservative usage—such spellings, for instance, as skilful, wilful, and distil.
This is not to say that the reformers mean to stop short with their present recommendations of the simpler accepted
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