h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>English spelling is arbitrary at best.

This is the reverse of Wittgenstein's observation.

Of course, all spelling is arbitrary: somebody made a decision that got accepted generally enough to make it into dictionaries. But the arbitrariness is pointed; you come across markers/shibboleths like how they (used to?) spell show 'shew' in Oxford, and (as TC observed) how they spell verger 'virger' in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Competitive orthography for snobbish purposes apepars to have occurred in more than one European country in the past. I think about France, where 18th-century men invented arcane rules that were only taught in higher schools, denied this education to the women, and then laughed at the women for trying to write without knowing them.

Spelling as in-joke. Maybe that's why we have so much nonsense whenever we try to rationalise this process of tidying up.

It always reminds me of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson arguing about the Declaration of Independence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YizxVlKG8CQ

197 scanned, 100 to go.

Then I can start making the changes. I've found 21 files so far than need a correction.

OK, those are all done and reported. I think I'll take a little break from proactive curating now.

Many thanks Gnomon - brilliant job

A frequently mispronounced archaicism, "motte and bayley", properly pronounced as though it has the modern spelling, "moat and bailey".