>If we demand original spelling in everything we read, why is any cutoff acceptable? I proposed Johnson's Dictionary because it's the first English dictionary

>If we demand original spelling in everything we read, why is any cutoff acceptable? I proposed Johnson's Dictionary because it's the first English dictionary that was widely accepted as authoritative. Before then you could argue that there was no real standard spelling, and all that mattered was whether writers could be understood. After it was published, idiosyncratic spelling gained meaning. >In fact we retain several archaic spelling styles in Lovecraft that we might otherwise modernize, because he was famous for thinking of himself as an "aged antiquarian" and wanted his prose to reflect that. I checked Lovecraft first for that reason, and I was relieved to find the changes were much less than I feared.