Invisible wrote:
> As I say, I got the impression that this whole idea of words having a 
> fixed spelling didn't exist until printing came along. 

Benjamin Franklin (late 1700s) was big on making things spelled 
consistently. We were taught in grade school that "Benjamin Franklin 
invented spelling", but I'm not finding support for that online.

> Like, ask five 
> different people and they'd spell the word five different ways. (And 
> probably pronounce it differently too, come to think of it.)

And spell it several different ways in the same paragraph, for that matter. 
I think Shakespeare tended to spell things pretty randomly, for example.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message