Editing Ormulum (section)

==Orthography==
Rather than conspicuous literary merit, the chief scholarly value of the ''Ormulum'' derives from Orrm's idiosyncratic orthographical system.<ref>[[#Treharne2000|Treharne 2000]], p.&nbsp;273</ref> He states that since he dislikes the way that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously.<ref>[[#Bennett1986|Bennett 1986]], pp.&nbsp;31–32</ref>

Orrm's chief innovation was to employ doubled consonants to show that the preceding vowel is short and single consonants when the [[vowel length|vowel is long]].<ref>[[#Treharne2000|Treharne 2000]], p.&nbsp;273</ref> For syllables that ended in vowels, he used accent marks to indicate length. In addition to this, he used three distinct letter forms for the letter ''g'' depending on how they sounded. He used insular <[[ᵹ]]> for the [[Voiced palatal approximant|palatal approximant]] {{IPA|[j]}}, a flat-topped <ꟑ> for the [[Voiced velar stop|velar stop]] {{IPA|[ɡ]}}, and a Carolingian <g> for the [[Voiced postalveolar affricate|palato-alveolar affricate]] {{IPA|[d͡ʒ]}},<ref>[[#Napier1894|Napier 1894]], pp.&nbsp;71–72</ref> although in printed editions the last two letters may be left undistinguished.<ref>Jack, George, in [[#Matthew2004|Matthew and Harrison 2004]], pp.&nbsp;936–937</ref> His devotion to precise spelling was meticulous. For example, he originally used ''eo'' and ''e'' inconsistently for words such as ''{{Not a typo|beon}}'' and ''{{Not a typo|kneow}},'' which had been spelled with ''eo'' in [[Old English]]. At line 13,000 he changed his mind and went back to change all the ''eo'' spellings in the book, replacing them with ''e'' alone (''ben'' and ''knew''), to reflect the pronunciation.<ref>Jack, George, in [[#Matthew2004|Matthew and Harrison 2004]], pp.&nbsp;936–937</ref>

The combination of this system with the rigid metre, and the stress patterns this meter implies, provides enough information to reconstruct his pronunciation with some precision; making the reasonable assumption that Orrm's pronunciation was in no way unusual, this permits scholars of the [[history of English]] to develop an exceptionally precise snapshot of exactly how Middle English was pronounced in the Midlands in the second half of the twelfth century.<ref>Jack, George, in [[#Matthew2004|Matthew and Harrison 2004]], pp.&nbsp;936–937</ref>