Custom vs. Reason

There was an intense interest in spelling reform in late sixteenth century England. There was just too much variation. Even the Queen spelt the same word differently in the same text if it suited her. Oddly enough, the printers, who favoured standardization, continued to reserve the right to use spelling variants when it was convenient. They could, for example, use the short form, bad, to avoid line-breaks and the long form, badde, to fill out a line to meet a right-hand margin. The system that finally emerged is tiresomely complex, as every learner of English can see till today. It basically goes back to a spelling reform proposed by Richard Mulcaster, which aimed at bringing some more order into the system without dislocating it. Characteristically, the other, much more radical, much more consistent spelling system, as proposed by John Hart, was not adopted. This is regrettable but perhaps not surprising. Hart himself anticipated some of the objections, above all ‘use’ or ‘custom’. There was, he argued, no argument against the power of ‘use’, except to raise the counter-claim of ‘reason’. But people did not want to listen to reason. Hart’s major guideline was one letter, one sound – a simple and indeed the fundamental principle of any alphabetic writing system. As a consequence, Hart wanted to abolish the different spelling of homophones (meet/meat, horse/hoarse, etc.). He inverted the popular argument saying that if the distinction were necessary, it would be much more necessary in spoken than in written texts, and if there was no need to make the difference in spoken language there was no need to make it in written language either. This is quite a telling point though it perhaps overlooks the importance of a shared context in spoken language. Moreover, if it simplified spelling, it might make reading more difficult. (Howatt, A.P.R.: A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 81-92)