Ralph Shumaker wrote:
[snip]
If only we, today, would be daring enough to let go of the customary
spellings on at least a *few* of the most common words and just spell
them more like they sound. I have chosen to do exactly that with words
like tho and thru. These "mistakes", at least, are common enough that
they don't act as speed bumps for the brain. I suppose "enuf" should be
a candidate, as well as "altho" (among many others). But even if we can
get enough people to do this, of course there's going to be differences
of opinion as to which ones to do it with. And that's all right. The
popular ones will catch on better than the unpopular. And I'm going to
do my part.
Tho I do *not* hold to the idea of carte blanch replacing with "z" every
part of every word that sounds like "z"
[....]
Each change was perfectly logical, tho each implementation made the
> resulting text progressively harder to read.
I think this approach would create too much backlash and the result may
end up worse than the start.
You mean like in the above two sentences where your non-standard
spelling inflicted whiplash on my eyes?
I think that most even moderately literate people have certain
expectations not only of how words are spelled, but also of how they
*look*. Much of the way we recognized words is based on the word's shape
and size. Changing not only a word's spelling, but also its size and
shape is like randomly placing real looking, but nonfunctional cars in
the middle of the freeway.
By the time the reader sees the word, he's already run over and past it,
and still wondering "What the hell was that!" when, disoriented, he has
to stop, back up, and take a second look.
I don't see efficiency in such spelling, except in certain contexts. I
see instead either laziness or ignorance or both.
However, I can put up with your changes a lot easier than the complete
and utter lazy ignorance of those assaulting me with a complete lack
capitalization (yes _every_ sentence should start with a capital letter)
and a complete ignorance of punctuation (it's not a contest to see how
many words you can fit into each sentence).
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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