spelling

Pluralspellings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act, practice, ability, or subject of forming words from their letters, or of reading words letter by letter; orthography.

   Years of reading and writing gave her near-perfect spelling.

   The language course covers grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

   Similarorthography

   Note

   This names a school subject and a whole system at once. The word was formed in the 1400s from the verb spell plus -ing. In this use it takes no plural, so people are good at spelling or study it alongside grammar. Henry Gallup Paine's Handbook of Simplified Spelling (1920) treats it as a human invention that can be improvedd 'in the direction of simplicity, economy, and efficiency.' That idea of spelling as something designed is what reform movements build on.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A particular way in which a given word is written with its letters.

   Dictionaries sometimes list more than one accepted spelling for the same word.

   Editors flagged the inconsistent spellings scattered throughout the manuscript.

   Similarform, rendering, version, variant

   Note

   This is the countable sense, the one that takes a plural and words of frequency: a common spelling, rival spellings of one name. Editors of old texts depend on it. 'Exlent' was a common spelling of excellent in Shakespeare's day, which explains a misreading in the second quarto of Hamlet. Similarly, 'reuerent' and 'Reuerend' were interchangeable then.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The manner in which words are formed from letters, especially correct spelling.

   The essay was strong on ideas but weak on spelling.

   Teachers marked the spelling mistakes in red ink.

   Similarorthography

   Note

   Here the word describes or judges a system of writing words rather than the skill of producing them. It stays uncountable: Elizabethan spelling, weak spelling. Once you mean one word's written form, switch to a single spelling, which takes a plural. Thompson and Taylor's Arden Hamlet (2006) shows why the distinction matters. Elizabethan spelling was 'fluid,' so editors feel free to modernize it.

4. 4
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of spell.

   He kept spelling the difficult words aloud during practice.

   Spelling long words correctly takes a lot of practice.

   Note

   The -ing form carries every meaning of the verb, not only the alphabetic one. A charm can be spelling its victim, and a bad forecast can be spelling disaster, with a single noun following. As a gerund it sits close to the noun for the skill. The difference is that the verb still takes an object, as in Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor's Arden Hamlet (2006): Shakespeare was 'capable of spelling his own name' in different ways.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The choice of notation among enharmonic equivalents: selecting which name to write for a single pitch.

   The editor questioned the spelling of that note as G-flat rather than F-sharp.

   Jazz arrangers sometimes pick a spelling that makes the chord's function clearer.

   Similarnotation

   Note

   In music, one sounding pitch can be written in more than one way, and the written choice is its spelling: F-sharp or G-flat. The ear hears no difference between them, so the reasons lie on the page. As Stoddard, Raphael and Utgoff put it in 2004, 'the spelling of a pitch is strongly influenced by its harmonic and melodic context.'

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