There is nothing innately funny or humorous about English spelling, though its vagaries have lent themselves to efforts in that way:

[from a letter by J. Bland published in the London Sunday Times, Jan. 3, Reference Bland1965; cited by Chomsky (Reference Chomsky1970) and by Adams (Reference Adams1990)]

The following example is not to be found in The History of English Spelling by the late Christopher Upward and George Davidson, but it notes the falsity or wrong-headedness of words in the discourse:

I doubt that you want to pay your debt at that publick house, Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe.

As the authors point out, doubt and debt owe their modern spelling to misguided 16th-century English Latinate scholars; publick was staunchly defended by that formidable 18th-century lexicographer, Samuel Johnson; and Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe is a pseudo-archaic (and oh-so-quaint) signage, though fortunately less and less seen.

The History of English Spelling, with its 300-plus pages of text and about 60 pages of back matter, concerns itself with much more than those who have wronged the language. As Davidson states in the Preface: ‘the purpose of this book is to trace… [the] history [of the English language] insofar as it pertains to the development of modern English spelling and its relationship to modern English pronunciation’. In a word (or two), the work amply accomplishes its purpose. Before proceeding further, however, I want to state what brings me to this book. I knew the late Christopher Upward, to whom I am related through marriage. As for my expertise, I consider myself a general reader with an interest in the English language, having taught English literature.

The first chapter, ‘Introduction and Overview’, restates in greater detail the central theme, as to account for both major and minor factors leading to present-day English spelling and ‘to analyse the complexities of its sound–spelling correspondences’. The complexities have arisen through stasis and change: the spelling became ‘fixed’, the pronunciation has changed through time. This process, in so far as modern English is concerned, began in the 15th century: early, with Henry V's scribes, whose more or less standardized English was carried throughout the kingdom; and late, with the introduction of printing into England from Flanders. Over time, what now forms standardized English spelling has resulted from an ‘increasing consensus among printers and lexicographers, reinforced by teachers, authors of literary primers and published writers…’ Variety and fluidity, nonetheless, continue to characterize English spelling, geographically (e.g. British plough versus American plow) and historically (e.g. Internet misspellings that may become acceptable) – i.e., change in English spelling remains a constant.

Fundamental to English spelling and leading to its unruliness is its ‘polysystemic’ nature. Piled onto Old English were Scandinavian (Old Norse), French (both Norman and Parisian), Latin, and Greek – over the centuries, of course – plus a myriad of other tongues, Spanish and Malay among them. Ensuing chapters take up these influences on English spelling in detail. As Davidson cautions, anyone investigating the development of a specific English word must consult the Oxford English Dictionary. All of Upward's immense research not used in the book is available, however, on a website (www.historyofenglishspelling.info) at Aston University, Birmingham, UK.

England and its languages from the Romans through the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invaders/settlers form the matter of chapter 2. The historical narrative, clearly set forth, carries one to the end of Old English in the mid-12th century. Davidson succinctly chronicles the varieties of Old English and its changes over time. Here, the general reader needs to have recourse to the lists of ‘Abbreviations and Symbols’, especially the phonetic symbols, given as part of the front matter. Having a copy of this list to hand will serve the general reader well in ensuing chapters.

The ways in which Old English has contributed to Modern English follow on in the next chapter. Here, specialist interest dominates. One learns, in a kind of preamble, that Modern English derives from an Old English dialect, East Midlands, and not from what had formerly served as a literary standard, West Saxon. (See fig. 1, map of OE dialects, and fig. 3, map of Middle English dialects.) There follows a letter-by-letter analysis of that derivation, from A (short A, long A, Æ, short Æ, and long Æ) to Z. The explanation and illustrative word-samples under each letter will prove satisfactory, this general reader trusts, to the specialist. Similar treatment of letters or sound symbols occurs in subsequent chapters.

The Normans make their arrival in chapter 4 and 1066. But, as the chapter narrates, within four and a half centuries French, both Norman and Parisian, plus a continental Latin, gave way to Middle English. That mid-15th-century English, however pronounced, is as written largely comprehensible to anyone reasonably fluent in English today. The details as to why this Middle English differs vastly from Old English, Davidson indicates, are beyond the scope of this book. His emphasis is on the narrative taking us from 1066 to the London standard of written English of the Court of Chancery from 1430 onward, from which ‘modern English developed’, and to the arrival of the printing press some forty years later with its further impact on standardization of English spelling.

The following chapter, the longest in the book, suspends the narrative to analyze the Franco-Latin influence on English vocabulary and spelling. Here and in the next chapter (six), the letter-by-letter analysis will again doubtless appeal more to the specialist than to the general reader. Yet I have found interesting nuggets of information in the solid grounding of these analyses here and elsewhere in the book. This latter chapter explores the ways in which Middle English orthographic and pronunciation changes, including a lucid account of the Great Vowel Shift (15th to early 17th centuries), have led to ‘… Modern English spelling and sound-spelling correspondences’ or the lack thereof. Its conclusion scrutinizes those false etymologies creating confusing English spellings (e.g. comptroller, indict, and doubt and debt). The ensuing two chapters examine in turn the Greek influence on English vocabulary and spelling and that of a veritable alphabet-soup of other tongues. Of the five waves of Greek influence, the third, beginning in the 1500s, when Greek words came into English via Latin, was the most important. Both chapters include the sort of detailed analysis of interest to specialists. But who among us might know, without consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, that slew (a quantity) derives from Irish Gaelic? Or that cummerbund is from Urdu and Persian, frolic from Dutch, and juggernaut from Hindi? These gleanings, however, are not subsumed under their etymologies, but like the many hundreds of other borrowings into English noticed in this chapter, under the various sound symbols or letters (e.g. ‘AU’, ‘MM’, or UE').

It is in the ninth and final chapter that the general reader will find much of interest: ‘Reformers, Lexicographers, and the Parting of the Ways.’ From the 16th- and 17th-century reformers, deploring with little effect the failure of English spelling to correspond with pronunciation; to 15th-century schoolmasters interested in ‘right’ spelling; to the early monolingual English dictionaries and some late 17th- and 18th-century writers who desired to ‘fix’ the English language, the chapter focuses on Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster. Johnson's hugely influential Dictionary of the English Language (Reference Johnson1755) – itself I note a huge undertaking of two volumes, folio – is ostensibly descriptive and certainly not reformist: thus, Davidson observes, was lost ‘an opportunity to make spelling less capricious and closer to the spoken form of the language…’ As for Webster, he proved himself less daring in spelling reform in his various dictionaries from 1806 on (Webster, Reference Webster1806, Reference Webster1828 and others) than he had been in his Dissertation on the English Language (Reference Webster1789). Here –it must have been patriotic fervor, I add – he declared himself in sympathy with Benjamin Franklin's Reference Franklin, Franklin and Vaughan1768 scheme to renovate the alphabet and reform the spelling. It had become, as Davidson notes, Webster's aim to differentiate American spelling as much as possible from British. This he achieved to a degree. But he had a further purpose: to standardize American spelling throughout the land. In this the Connecticut Yankee succeeded. Some Americans say bucket, others pail, but all will write left, right and center. The chapter concludes, after a brief notice of modern-day efforts at spelling reform, primarily those of the London-based Simplified Spelling Society (now English Spelling Society), including Upward's Cut Spelling, and of those resistant to reform, with the muted hope that some reforms will occur.

The 60 pages of back matter, commencing with a comprehensive bibliography, make a significant contribution, of interest to the general reader and of much practical use to the specialist. While ‘The Glossary of Technical Terms’ is of greater help to the former than to the latter, the two indexes, ‘Language and Dialect Index’ and ‘Word and Word-Element Index’, are valuable resources, especially the former. It begins with Abenaki and ends with Zulu, demonstrating in alphabetical sequence the multifarious and far-flung influences on the spelling of English words. As for the word index, it brings to mind the awesome charge to the proofreader to get the spelling right (unless here it is computer-driven spell-checking). That a typographical error exists in the chapters devoted to an alphabetical letter-by-letter or other item-by-item analysis of spelling, I very much doubt, though I cannot declare them free of error. In the more discursive chapters, I encountered one minor error (is for in on p. 310).

Not being a linguist, I have to take it on faith that all those several detailed analyses are linguistically sound. The very detail would argue for that accuracy. Having had some acquaintance with the history of our language, especially as it relates to that across the long 18th century (1660–1800), I note the compressed, yet accurate treatment of English-language dictionaries (pp. 297–9) leading to Johnson's in mid-century. The decision on the authors' part – specifically here, Davidson's – to move across time and space, from Johnson to Webster, from mid-18th-century England to America of about 1800, makes very good sense. (I am not sure what other option might obtain.) This Anglo-American divergence reveals itself in small ways in The History of English Spelling: the authors use spelt, towards, and amongst (among others), where Americans would typically write spelled, toward, and among. Perhaps space considerations kept Davidson from addressing the ways, if any, in which the Oxford English Dictionary has helped to bridge this divide. But there is no evidence in this history that, as some aver, we are divided by our language in common. Such wee differences as occur do not in the least impede the clearly rendered and easy flow of ideas across the pages, as in those chapters of historical narrative, for this American reader.

For those with a general curiosity about how our words have been shaped (or often enough, misshaped) The History of English Spelling will well satisfy it. For etymologists and linguists generally it should serve as the reference work on its subject for years to come. Though I cannot say that this is the definitive work on it, I should not be surprised if it is.