Book description
Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing
press and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or
style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply
spelled it the way it sounded to their foreign ears, and it stuck.
Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular but twenty-five per
cent is complicated, and in Spell It Out, our foremost linguistics
expert David Crystal extends a helping hand to the confused and curious
alike. He unearths the stories behind the rogue words that confound us,
and explains why these peculiarities entered the mainstream, in an epic
journey taking in sixth century monks, French and Latin upstarts, the
Industrial Revolution and the internet. By learning the history and the
principles, Crystal shows how the spellings that break all the rules
become easier to get right. Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William
Caxton, inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees are to
blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century
Bruges, the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to their
foreign ears, and it stuck. Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is
regular but twenty-five per cent is complicated, and in Spell It Out,
our foremost linguistics expert David Crystal extends a helping hand to
the confused and curious alike. He unearths the stories behind the rogue
words that confound us, and explains why these peculiarities entered the
mainstream, in an epic journey taking in sixth century monks, French and
Latin upstarts, the Industrial Revolution and the internet. By learning
the history and the principles, Crystal shows how the spellings that
break all the rules become easier to get right.
