Word: variants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Good spellers, Smith says, should be able to go on writing as usual; those who find the current rules of English too hard to learn should have their spelling labeled variant, not wrong. Smith zeroes in on 10 candidates for variant spellings, culled from his students' most commonly misspelled (or mispelled, as Smith suggests) words. Among them are Febuary instead of February, twelth instead of twelfth and truely instead of truly - all words, he says, that involve confusion over silent letters. When students would ask why there's no e in truly, Smith didn't really have an answer...
...centuries: Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Norway, Ireland, Indonesia and Japan, among others, have all instituted such reforms; Portugal in May amended its spelling to follow the simpler Brazilian rules. Since 1755, when the English language was standardized in Samuel Johnson's aptly named Dictionary of the English Language, many variant spellings have become widely accepted on both sides of the pond. In 1864, for instance, the U.S. government officially changed the spelling of words like centre and timbre to end in the variant -er; more recently, at the beginning of the 20th century, fantasy became an accepted variant of phantasy...
...Pickett, executive editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, says that changes to dictionary entries are always on the table, but he and his seven fellow editors are a tough crowd. They keep an eye on print publications to see whether a variant usage has started to become mainstream. Any word that seems to be a good candidate for an update undergoes rigorous scrutiny as the editors seek input from a panel of some 200 orthographic and lexicographic whizzes. Even among this writerly crowd, 13% admitted in 1996 to combining a lot into a single word. But 93% still considered...
...addition, the stem cells are specific to only a certain type of the disease, which afflicts less than five percent of sufferers, Eggan said. But the study authors said research on this less-common variant could have broader applications, if, as they hope, the disease mechanism is similar for most or all types of Lou Gehrig's disease despite different initial triggers in the vast majority of ALS patients...
...legislation aims to combat the spread of France's variant of the "drinking to get drunk" behavior that has long been a problem in the U.K. and on American college campuses. But it is bound to discourage alcohol consumption among adults, too. Its measures include prohibiting alcohol sales in gas stations; absent, however, is the banning of happy hour in bars and cafés, as health experts have urged...