10% off all books and free delivery over £50
Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.

Spell It Out

View All Editions (3)

£10.99 £9.89

In Stock. Same day dispatch on orders before 3pm.

Add To Wishlist
Write A Review

About

Spell It Out Synopsis

Why is there an 'h' in ghost? William Caxton, inventor of the printing press and his Flemish employees are to blame: without a dictionary or style guide to hand in fifteenth century Bruges, the typesetters simply spelled it the way it sounded to their foreign ears, and it stuck. Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular but twenty-five per cent is complicated, and in Spell It Out our foremost linguistics expert David Crystal extends a helping hand to the confused and curious alike. He unearths the stories behind the rogue words that confound us, and explains why these peculiarities entered the mainstream, in an epic journey taking in sixth century monks, French and Latin upstarts, the Industrial Revolution and the internet. By learning the history and the principles, Crystal shows how the spellings that break all the rules become easier to get right.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9781846685682
Publication date:
Author: David Crystal
Publisher: Profile Books an imprint of Profile
Format: Paperback
Pagination: 328 pages