Page:The American Language.djvu/273

Rh of the English gaol and gaoler, says that ax is better than axe, drops the final e from asphalte and forme, changes the y to i in cyder, cypher and syren and advocates the same change in tyre, drops the redundant t from nett, changes burthen to bur- den, spells wagon with one g, prefers /use to fuze, and takes the e out of storey. "Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford," also edited by Hart (with the ad- vice of Sir James Murray and Dr. Henry Bradley), is another very influential English authority. It gives its imprimatur to bark (a ship), cipher, siren, jail, story, tire and wagon, and even advocates kilogram, and omelet. Finally, there is Cassell's English Dictionary. It clings to the -our and -re endings and to annexe, waggon and cheque, but it prefers jail to gaol, net to nett, asphalt to asphalte and story to storey, and comes out flatly for judgment, fuse and siren.

Current English spelling, like our own, shows a number of uncertainties and inconsistencies, and some of them are undoubt- edly the result of American influences that have not yet become fully effective. The lack of harmony in the -our words, leading to such discrepancies as honorary and honourable, I have already mentioned. The British Board of Trade, in attempting to fix the spelling of various scientific terms, has often come to grief. Thus it detaches the final -me from gramme in such compounds as kilogram and milligram, but insists upon gramme when the word stands alone. In American usage gram is now common, and scarcely challenged. All the English authorities that I have consulted prefer metre and calibre to the American meter and caliber. They also support the ae in such words as aetiology, aesthetics, mediaeval and anaemia, and the oe in oesophagus,