Many respected and influential people have been active supporters of spelling reform. This list of English-language spelling reform advocates who are
notable for other reasons lists them by date of birth where possible.
Successful reform advocates •
Samuel Johnson, poet, wit, essayist, biographer, critic and eccentric, broadly credited with the standardization of English spelling in his
Dictionary of the English Language (1755). •
Noah Webster, author of the first important American dictionary, believed that Americans should adopt simpler spellings where available and recommended it in his
A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806).
Other reform advocates Pre-19th century •
Orrm, 12th century Augustine canon monk and eponymous author of the
Ormulum, in which he stated that, since he dislikes that people are mispronouncing English, he will spell words exactly as they are pronounced, and describes a system whereby vowel length and value are indicated unambiguously. He distinguished short vowels from long by doubling the following consonants, or, where this is not feasible, by marking the short vowels with a superimposed
breve accent. •
Thomas Smith, a secretary of state to
Queen Elizabeth I, who published his proposal
De recta et emendata linguæ angliæ scriptione, 1568, which advocates for spelling reform while not detailing its own system. •
Benjamin Franklin, American innovator and revolutionary, added letters to the Roman alphabet for
his own personal solution to the problem of English spelling in 1768.
19th century onwards •
Robert Bridges, British
Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930, devised a phonetic alphabet for English, as well as removing useless
silent 'e's. •
George Bernard Shaw,
playwright, willed part of his estate to fund the creation of what would become the
Shavian alphabet. •
Upton Sinclair, author, wrote a letter to Theodore Roosevelt advocating for spelling reform. •
Mont Follick,
Labour (UK) Member of Parliament,
polyglot and author who preceded
Pitman in drawing the English spelling reform issue to the attention of
Parliament in 1949 and 1952. Favored replacing w and y with u and i. •
James Pitman, grandson of
Isaac Pitman, publisher and
Conservative Member of Parliament, invented the
Initial Teaching Alphabet, which is not technically a spelling reform. •
Ronald Reagan, U.S. president, supported reform in his youth, and retained some simplified spellings even when in office, such as "bellys", "mysterys", "nite", "burocrat", "burocracy". •
Richard Feynman, physicist, gave a talk entitled
This Unscientific Age in which he advocated for spelling reform, among other things. •
Isaac Asimov, author, wrote several essays on language reform in which he proposed respelling all word-final Lexical set| as , as as well as reforming grammar. •
Charles Darwin, famous biologist, whose involvement in the subject was continued by
his physicist grandson of the same name. •
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet laureate. •
Isaac Pitman, creator of
Pitman shorthand. •
Alexander John Ellis, philologist. •
Alexander Bain, philosopher. •
Max Müller, philologist, who published works advocating for spelling reform. •
John Hall Gladstone, chemist. •
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, close friend of Charles Darwin. •
Walter William Skeat, philologist, who would go on to found the
English Spelling Society and was also a member of the
Simplified Spelling Board. •
James Murray, editor of the OED, who was also a member of the
Simplified Spelling Board. •
Henry Sweet, linguist. •
Archibald Sayce,
Assyriologist and philologist.
Simplified Spelling Board Simplified Spelling Board was founded in 1906 with the following people on its list of members. and funded the
Simplified Spelling Board. •
Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. president, commissioned the
Simplified Spelling Board to research and recommend simpler spellings and tried to require the U.S. government to adopt them, though his approach to assume popular support by
executive order rather than to garner it, •
Mark Twain, author and humorist. •
Melvil Dewey, inventor of the
Dewey Decimal System, wrote published works in simplified spellings and even simplified his own name from
Melville to
Melvil.
English Spelling Society The
English Spelling Society, (formerly the
Simplified Spelling Society) was founded in 1908 and is still in operation. A full list of their presidents can be found on that page. •
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell was a vice-president. •
Israel Gollancz, philologist, was a founding member. •
H. G. Wells, science fiction writer, became a one-time vice-president after granting permission to publish one of his short stories in reformed spelling, presumably
The Star, given its continued use by the society. •
Daniel Jones, phonetician and professor of
phonetics at
University College London, was a president. •
Charles Galton Darwin, physicist grandson of
Charles Darwin, was a wartime vice-president. •
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was a one-time patron, and stated that spelling reform should start outside of the UK, and that the lack of progress originates in the discord amongst reformers. However, his abandonment of the cause was coincident with literacy being no longer an issue for his own children, and his less than lukewarm involvement may have ended as a result of the society's rejection of attempts to 'pull strings' behind the scenes. •
Anatoly Liberman, professor in the Department of
German,
Scandinavian and
Dutch at the
University of Minnesota, is the current president, and has advocated for spelling reforms in his weekly column on word origins at the
Oxford University Press blog. He has expressed a desire to remove the letters 'c', 'q', and 'x', where possible. •
John C. Wells, former professor of
phonetics at
University College London, is a former president who advocated for
New Spelling. ==See also==