Editing Language change (section)

===Spelling changes===

Standardisation of [[spelling]] originated centuries ago.{{Vague|date=October 2016}}{{Citation needed|date=July 2008}} Differences in spelling often catch the eye of a reader of a text from a previous century. The pre-print era had fewer [[literacy|literate]] people: languages lacked fixed systems of orthography, and the manuscripts that survived often show words spelled according to regional pronunciation and to personal preference.
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The development of the [[printing press]] in the 15th century, however, presented printers with dilemmas of standardisation: texts from the fifteenth through to the seventeenth centuries show many internal inconsistencies, with the same word often spelled differently within the same text. Writers contributed to the variety: famously, [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] spelled his own name in many different ways. Additionally, typesetters sometimes selected various spellings based on [[typographical]] criteria, such as aiming for uniform line-lengths when assembling type pieces on a composing stick. As typesetters found it easier to make one of the lines of type longer than to make the other lines shorter, word lengths tended to standardize on the longer spellings.

Modern English spellings do not result from a single consistent system; rather, they show evidence of previous pronunciations which changed over time. For example, the spelling of words such as "night" hints at an older pronunciation, the "gh" representing a sound similar to that conveyed by "ch" in the Scottish pronunciation of ''loch'' {{IPA|[x]}}. Other examples include the "k"-sound once pronounced in words like "knee" or "knight", and the "ch" in "chicken" or "cheese", which English-speakers once pronounced as 'k'. Note too the use of hard [[yer]]s in older Russian orthography, and phasing out of 'th' in favour of 't' in many German words in the [[{{ill|de|Orthographische Konferenz von 1876}} | spelling reforms of 1876]].

One could regard many of the conventions of English spelling as stuck in the 15th century: [[William Caxton]] (died ca. 1492) chose the [[East Midlands English|East Midland dialect]] (specifically the [[London]] variety) of English as the basis for his first printed English-language work in 1476. He had to discriminate against many synonyms used in other areas of England (such as [[East Anglia]], [[Northumberland]] and [[Mercia]]). For example, Caxton's public found the Southern word "eyren" mutually unintelligible with the Northern equivalent, "egges" (modern English: "eggs").
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