Questions tagged [orthography]
This tag is for questions concerning the written representation of the English language, especially spelling and word breaks (including hyphenation).
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Footnote style using asterisk should have space or no space between symbol and note? [migrated]
When referencing a footnote using an asterisk or other acceptable symbols such as dagger and double dagger, in the footnote itself do you put a space between the symbol and the note?
Example:
This is ...
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2
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359
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Why is "deterrence” spelt with two r's?
Looking at a medium-sized word list, all words are written "erence" with the exception of "deterrence" and the name "Terrence". I can find 50 words ending in "erence&...
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6
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How should I spell Zelensky?
Recently, Volodymyr Zelensky (for this question, I will use the shorter version of his name), the president of Ukraine, has been in the news frequently due to the war in his country.
However, news ...
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1
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Why does "know" start with k but "gnostic" start with g?
It appears that know and gnostic share the same etymology (PIE gnō, apparently through Greek gnōstikós). So how did they come to start with different letters?
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Correct writing of "clinical- and policy-relevant evidence"
I'm struggling with concise writing of the following. None of the sentences "sound" nice. Could you give some guidance?
A) There is a need for both clinically and policy-relevant evidence?
...
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Is it wrong to skip the pronoun when writing in the first person? [duplicate]
When writing short texts, usually detailing something I have done, I tend to not use the "I" pronoun in front of verbs, usually in front of past-tense constructions. Have seen it in emails ...
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22
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Clarification on double letters [duplicate]
Is it meeting your just “deserts” or “desserts”?
6
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1
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Why are "er”, "ar” and "or" often listed as R-colored vowels but "air”, "ear" and "oor/ure" are not? Are they vowels or vowel+consonant?
NOTE: I speak a rhotic variety of English.
I am struggling with how to explain r-coloured vowels/vocalic R to teachers during a presentation on the phonemes of English. Many grapheme-phoneme lists ...
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Are there Canadians who actually spell "organiSe, organiSation" "recogniSe" "realiSe" "authoriSe" with an S instead of a Z? [closed]
I've been noticing that some of my fellow Canadians habitually spell words such as "organise, organisation" "realise" recognise""authorise" instead "organize, ...
user444265
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Why arithmetic does not end up with s? [duplicate]
Usually disciplines end up with s: mathematics, ballistics, genetics, gymnastics, linguistics, logistics, optics, politics, semantics, statistics, etc.
A simple question: why did arithmetic not end up ...
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Could a comma be used after a question mark? [duplicate]
I'm unsure if this is the appropriate community to ask this question, but it is related to punctuation (:-)). I'm currently doing research for a city council in my state, where I and my colleagues are ...
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Swap or Swop? Which do you use? Is one preferred or correct as opposed to the other or are both equally valid? [duplicate]
I see that there was some mention of this on this site 4 years ago.
I am quite surprised to see that 'swap' appears to be the ordinary or dominant spelling
and that 'swop' is a variant. In South ...
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1
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Is the use of ‘ize’ ever standard for any word over the use of ‘ise’ in UK English? [duplicate]
Is there any occasion upon which in British English, the ‘z’ is normally used and the ending ‘ise’ would be incorrect?
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When to substitute ‘z’ for ‘s’ in American English [duplicate]
Is there a rule as regards substituting the ‘s’ for a ‘z’ in American usage or does it apply to all words ending ‘ise’?
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How did English come to use a variation of the Polish spelling for Czechoslovakia?
In English, and a few languages influenced by English (e.g. Malay, Samoan, Yoruba), the name of the former European country is spelled "Czechoslovakia".
That isn't how it is spelled in other ...
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What constitutes humor on this "i before e" coffee mug text? [closed]
I saw this writing on a coffee mug, which is supposedly popular amongst linguists:
i before e
Except after C
and also when you
heinously seize your
feisty foreign neighbor's
conceited beige heifer
...
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Is there a (more-or-less) established spelling for “the us[ual]”?
Unusual orthography
When you visit your local diner, or favorite bar, and the server wants to know if you’d like your standard order, the thing you always get, they’ll often inquire, in shorthand:
...
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How did English come to use a writing system which makes spelling it so hard?
Alphabetic writing systems use graphemes to represent
phonemes. But in their “Psychology of Reading”
chapter
of 2003’s Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science,
researchers Simon Garrod and Meredyth Daneman
...
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0
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63
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Why didn't spelling of words keep track of pronunciation changes during the great vowel shift?
In the English language, words are written according to the way they were pronounced before the great vowel shift. Take e.g. the sentence: "I came from my house, now I'm here". If we ...
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One or two words: "Doorframe" or "Door frame"?
Is "doorframe" correct? Or is "door frame" correct?
Merriam Webster is saying "doorframe" however every professional editing software I use flags the word doorframe as a ...
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1
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243
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Hobbes spelling inconsistency
I was reading Chapter 2 of Leviathan, on Page 17 of my edition (but I'm not sure if most editions have the same numbering). Hobbes spells the same word two different ways, "brain" and "...
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Why is double -ll- used after a vowel digraph in "surveilled, surveilling"?
Why is the letter l double in the inflections of the verb surveil?
It's not in those of (as)sail or veil, and AmE has canceled but mostly cancellation. It's a counterintuitive spelling similar to ...
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Glamourisation/Glamorisation/Glamorization?
I ran into a problem whilst writing the word 'glamourisation'. I want to adhere to the British spelling, which I think would be with and but the Oxford English Dictionary has no entry for '...
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Plural "-i" vs. "-uses" [duplicate]
Similarly to Latin words with no plurals in English I still have trouble with some plurals when the word ends in -us.
For example, I have often been told that the plural for cactus is cacti, but then ...
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Accent marks on nouns [duplicate]
English does not use accent marks basically.
However, some foreign names and nouns (like Dalí, Gaudí, café, fiancé) contain accents symbols.
Then, the question is "is it ok to write without ...
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1
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How does the word "today" make sense?
So I'm currently reading a book from the 1930s (Lost Horizon), where some language conventions are quite different than the language conventions I am used to today.
One thing piqued my interest: The ...
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Can you ever place a comma ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ the word "which"? [duplicate]
Is there any scenario in which a comma is used right after the word which?
For example, is this sentence correctly written as is — or not?
The sensitivity to material AAA, which, in fact, is ...
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correctness of "and the smallest last" vs "and the smallest, last"
Which is correct? If both are correct, is one more correct than the other?
The largest pixie should be eaten first, and the smallest last.
The largest pixie should be eaten first, and the smallest, ...
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Did quotation marks have other applications or uses, like for emphasis?
I have frequently observed instances of quotation marks being used in interesting ways, often with rather funny implications.
Here are some notable examples of unnecessary or suspicious quotation ...
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5
answers
395
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Is the hyphen in the adjective phrase “just-[past participle]” mandatory?
I came across the following sentence:
The target can be resolved through one of the just mentioned record types.
I believe it should have been written as “… just-mentioned record types”, with a ...
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What do we call the shift in the orthography of words like "cuppa, fella, attaboy and attagirl"? [duplicate]
I know that words like
cuppa, fella, attaboy and attagirl
are contractions of, respectively,
cup of tea, fellow, that's the/a boy and that's the/a girl.
I wonder if there is a term which would ...
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Why did word final S get replaced by "CE" in Middle and Modern English?
There are many words in English that have ce at the end in Modern English. The roots they have come from had s but replaced by ce in Modern English. Is there any reason why the s's got replaced by ce? ...
user387044
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'Frame' or "frames' of reference [duplicate]
I am stuck on whether to use 'frame' or 'frames' of reference.
Example sentences:
This study seeks to add value to the theologies of the Hebrew Scriptures in both its Hebrew and Greek frame/frames of ...
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Georeferencing vs. Geo-referencing [closed]
What would be the correct spelling:
georeferencing or
geo-referencing?
I'm writing my PhD on the topic and would prefer to write correctly, of course. Some research I've conducted already:
Merriam-...
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"quantum mechanical" vs "quantum-mechanical" [duplicate]
I'm currently writing a short report, where one (sub-)chapter heading reads:
The quantum(-)mechanical basics
I am now wondering, whether it is preferable with or without the hyphen. When googling ...
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1
answer
189
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Capitalization of "neo-scholasticism" [duplicate]
Is the word 'neo-scholasticism' capitalized in academic writing, or not?
It is lowercase in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but capitalized in the Collins English dictionary. So in a thesis, which ...
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Why does ou change to o when adding the suffix -ous in words such as ‘humorous’?
Background
I realised today that humour when made an adjective by adding the suffix -ous, loses its -ou- spelling to -o-. There are some other words which have a change in spelling, such as miracle → ...
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When is the "Short A" sound actually spelled with an AE?
I was reading a book on English spelling (Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, by Greg Brooks) and it mentioned that the Short A sound (æ) can be spelled using the following graphemes:
...
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448
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Why are "mobile" and "automobile" pronounced differently?
I just came across the words and then I looked them both up in the dictionary app, which shows the word "mobile" pronounces as /'məʊbaɪl/, whereas the other word-"automobile", ...
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How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake? [duplicate]
How do you tell a spelling mistake from a grammar mistake? For example:
Your the best.
This iz the end.
I likes music.
She preatend to be asleep.
One method is to read the erroneous sentence aloud (...
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Publick or Public? in the 18th and 19th Century Britain
The spelling of -ck was more popular than -c in many words in Britain. But in America, Noah Webster proposed around 1800 to replace -ck by -c, which caused the widespread of this -c spelling in US.
In ...
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Term for intentional inaccuracies that better convey meaning?
Is there a term or concept that describes instances where an author/speaker intentionally or knowingly uses wrong spelling/pronunciation/grammar because it better conveys the intended meaning, and is ...
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Does English allow /eɪʃ/ in the end of a syllable (in the same syllable)?
The sound /ʃ/ is almost always spelled with more than one letter i.e. with a digraph unlike, say, /p/ which is spelled with a single letter (pan, pen, pie). I have noticed a particular pattern: vowels ...
user387044
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1
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Which letters do not appear consecutively in English words?
Are there any letters in the English alphabet that never appear twice consecutively in a word?
For example: the word running has the letter n repeated consecutively in it.
What letters never appear in ...
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How did words like rubbish, ribbon and cabbage get "BB"?
Certain words that have double B in Modern English didn't have "BB" in the word they are derived from.
Rubbish: "c. 1400, robous, from Anglo-French rubouses" (Etymology Dictionary)...
user387044
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Approach to or for? [closed]
My sentence:
---The exploitation of natural and ecofriendly resources could be an alternative approach to creating a sustainable environment.
Is the preposition correct or should I rearrange the ...
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0
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Is counter example a valid form of counterexample?
In student writing about math, I see the term "counter example" instead of "counterexample" too often. Does anyone have good ideas about why people think "counterexample" ...
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which is correct here, break or broke? [closed]
which one is correct?
"Steve was amazing before his leg break."
"Steve was amazing before his leg broke."
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Why does the word ‘suffix’ have a double ‘ff’ while ‘prefix’ has a single ‘f’?
While writing the word ‘suffix’, I stopped to do a spellcheck as a result of the ‘ff’. I did not do so with the word ‘prefix’ as I was comfortable with the ‘pre’ and ‘fix’. I looked up ‘ff’ vs. ‘f’ ...
user414952
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Cosmetics: Make up, make-up, or makeup? [closed]
When referring to cosmetics, which is correct? Make up, make-up, or makeup? And does it matter in case of a noun, verb, adjective?
The actor playing Frankenstein's monster wore 6 pounds of [makeup |
...
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