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Originally Posted by DanaC
. . . I don't see it as a matter of spelling reform per se...more that certain spellings shift across time and eventually the mispell becomes the standard.
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Let us hope this one doesn't, even if it is one of the ones that can sneak up and snap you on the ass with a rubber band. Mis + Spell...
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This does happen anyway. It happens all the time. Words fall in and out of use, spellings become outdated. The use of hyphens for example in many words have fallen out of favour and are no longer included in the dictionary listings of those words. I'm quietly confident in the people who compose and monitor the dictionaries. I think they do a fairly good job of maintaining relevance to the living language.
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Brings up the question of whether hyphens should be considered part of spelling. I've always thought of them as purely punctuation, even in assembling words at the right edge of a page, back in '63 when dinosaurs ruled before word-wrap evolved. And may be evolving into wordwrap as we speak.
Something you can particularly tell us, Dana: is not "favour" is said rather like "fave-oor" in some parts of the UK? The American is distinctly short-o "fave-or," or indistinctly a schwa -- "fav'r."