Laguage change

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Spelling

Discussion of spelling is bedevilled by strong social attitudes. Even teachers, who should know better, characterize n/s spelling by epithets such as "bad", "poor", "awful" or "appalling" - as if the writer wilfully ignored the standard form. The National Curriculum draws attention to many other features of written performance as well as spelling, but the social attitudes persist. Yet Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton (necessarily) wrote without regard to a standard, so standard spelling can hardly be a measure of merit. The allegation that n/s spelling confuses the reader is often false (as with n/s omission or adding of a second consonant or n/s e before -ing in verbs). Non-standard spellings used in marketing (Kwik Fit, Kwik Save, Toys R Us) rarely appear unintentionally in children's writing, as any teacher knows. On the other hand, the commonest "errors" such as alot for (standard) a lot, grammer for (standard) grammar or belive for standard believe all make clear what the writer intends.

Johnson's dictionary establishes a standard because it is not prescriptive but descriptive. It records what is in Johnson's (very wide) reading the most common form, making allowance for consistency of like elements, and showing etymology, for those who know other languages. Thus cede (verb=give, from Latin) and seed (noun) are differently spelt though homophones (having more or less the same sound value). Johnson also disarms critics by quoting usage, not merely laying down a preferred form.

The modern reader sees Noah Webster's variants as distinctly American (ax, color, plow, theater, waggon) but often Webster has recorded an older English form than Dr. Johnson.

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Punctuation

Punctuation, which may be more critical to communicating meaning than spelling, provokes much less strong social attitudes - perhaps because n/s forms are less obvious, perhaps because punctuation has no defining moment like the publication of Johnson's dictionary, but has evolved gradually and has standard forms but is open to change.

From the 18th century onwards one sees most punctuation marks which are considered standard today. Some have changed their use - in general, late 20th century texts, especially non-literary texts, have less frequent use of marks which are deemed optional. In modern German, a comma to separate clauses is obligatory, but not in English. Businesses use so-called “open punctuation” of addresses (no comma after each element). In many cases ignorance or confusion about conventions may cause writers to avoid some marks: the semi-colon and colon are problematic, while the great difference of function between hyphen and dash may be confused by lack of difference in appearance: on a typewriter the same key served for both (some typists would repeat the stroke for a dash). Some modern computer software restores the difference, where the grammar checking can detect that the context calls for the (longer) dash. (HTML character sets seem not to distinguish between the hyphen and dash, so I can't show you the difference in appearance here.)

Some writers may have caused punctuation marks to lose impact by over-use. Teachers will be familiar with multiple exclamation marks, or with exclamation marks in contexts where only mild emphasis is intended.

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Phonology

Before the advent of modern recording and broadcasting technology debate about sounds was reliant on written transcripts, which could at best approximate to real phonology. Much is made of inference from, for example, rhyming words in poetry - did the poet use imperfect rhyme or have sounds changed in, for example, John Donne's "And find/What wind/Serves to advance an honest mind". Does US (rhymes with lurk) or UK (rhymes with dark) pronunciation of clerk preserve the older English form - or have two rival sounds fared differently in separate locations? And what of lieutenant? US loo-ten-unt (with stress on first or second syllable) is closer to the French original than UK lef-ten-unt (stress on second syllable).

The various phonetic alphabets give a symbolic representation of sounds that are described in terms of physical performance (for example the position of tongue relative to teeth). Modern recording technology can be used to give a far more precise and objective description of a sound produced, as a waveform or a measure of frequency and so on.

As sound recording is now more than a century old, we can observe change and standardizing tendencies in spoken English. Received Pronunciation (RP) is a notional standard form of pronunciation. RP is associated with prestige and formal public spoken discourse, such as the law, parliament, education or broadcasting. In some of these it may be in tension with regional variations. RP currently is a modified form of the accent heard in independent and grammar schools or spoken by newsreaders; the accent is largely neutral as regards region, but long/soft vowels are preferred to hard/short vowel sounds. Listening to a recording of a broadcast from an earlier period (a Pathé  newsreel or Alvar Liddell [an early BBC radio broadcaster] reading the news for the BBC) will show how far RP has changed over time - the earlier RP survives in part in the accent of Queen Elizabeth II, who speaks with much less clearly differentiated (or less open) vowels than the modern RP speaker (the stiff upper lip is literal as well as a metaphor). Our notion of RP in earlier times may also derive from the accents heard in UK feature films (think of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter). We have no easy way of knowing how far this corresponded to the prestige accent of the time.