People will bend over backwards to rationalize it but the actual explanation is quite simple: 16th-century typesetters saw it as beautiful, and a norm was born.

People will bend over backwards to rationalize it but the actual explanation is quite simple: 16th-century typesetters saw it as beautiful, and a norm was born. IIRC, the somewhat random allocation of trailing silent "e"s in English spelling can partly be explained by typesetters trying to fill lines. Totally agree with you BTW. I find justification ugly as sin.