spelling

Definition:

In written language, the choice and arrangement of letters that form words. See also:

• Orthography
• Diacritic Mark
• Eye Dialect
• Cut Spelling
• Top Four Spelling Rules
• Commonly Misspelled Words
• Commonly Confused Words
• Spelling Review Exercise
• The Spell Checker Poem
• Writers on English Spelling
• Mark Twain on the Rotten English Alphabet

Etymology:

From Middle English, "reading letter by letter"

Examples and Observations:

• "George Bernard Shaw once defined the British and Americans as two peoples separated by a common language. Not just in accent and vocabulary but in spelling, too, this is true.
  
  "Like the spelling of 'honor' versus 'honour' and 'defense' versus 'defence,' the use of one L versus two in certain positions in words is a sure sign of American English. Classic examples include American 'traveled,' 'jewelry,' 'counselor,' and 'woolen' versus British and Commonwealth 'travelled,' 'jewellery,' 'counsellor,' and 'woollen.' Yet American spelling may sometimes take two L's, not only in obvious cases like 'hall' but in 'controlled,' 'impelled,' (from 'control' and 'impel') and elsewhere.
  
  "Most of our specifically American spelling rules come from Noah Webster, the Connecticut-born educator and lexicographer whose magnum opus was his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language."
  (David Sacks, Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of Our Alphabet From A to Z, Broadway Books, 2003)



• There is no necessary link . . . between reading and spelling: there are many people who have no difficulty in reading, but who have a major persistent handicap in spelling--this may be as many as 2% of the population. There seems moreover to be a neuro-anatomical basis for the distinction, for there are brain-damaged adults who can read but not spell, and vice versa."
  (David Crystal, How Language Works, Overlook Press, 2006)

Pronunciation: SPEL-ing