The Failed Attempts to Simplify English Spelling: Interview with Gabe Henry

All right, Gabe Henry, welcome to Words for Granted.

Hey, Ray.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure.

So, last year, you wrote a book called Enough is Enough.

That is E-N-U-F.

And were I not on hiatus from Words for Granted, we would have talked about this last year.

But here we are now, a little bit late.

But it's a fantastic book, and it's basically about our many failed attempts to simplify English spelling.

And when I say our...

This is basically a group of passionate weirdos, some of which are very famous, some of which are not, who are English speakers who have some beef to pick with English spelling.

So before we jump in, just give me the greatest hits of names of spelling reformers that you talk about in your book.

okay here we go so passionate weirdos um benjamin franklin noah webster charles darwin mark twain william james the psychologist george bernard shaw i mean the list really goes on and on and then there's some not so passionate weirdos some people who just dabbled in it for a time you've got people like melville dewey who was the creator of the dewey decimal system theodore roosevelt who dabbled in it for about six really bizarre months in 1906.

And then a lot of other people on the periphery who were interested, who took some time to spell their letters and their correspondence in simplified spelling using simplifications like laugh spelled L-A-F or love L-U-V. I'm thinking of writers at the start of the 20th century, like H.G. Wells.

H.G. Wells, for a time, he was actually so into this idea of spelling reform that he shortened the spelling of his last name for a time, just spelling it with one L.

So a small simplification, but really just a way to show the world that he was on board with this messaging of simpler, more standardized phonetic spelling for English speakers.