Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell

A brief and humorous 500-year history of the Simplified Spelling Movement from advocates like Ben Franklin, C. S. Lewis, and Mark Twain to texts and Twitter.

Why does the G in George sound different from the G in gorge? Why does C begin both case and cease? And why is it funny when a philologist faints, but not polight to laf about it? Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to write in English has, at one time or another, struggled with its spelling.So why do we continue to use it? If our system of writing words is so tragically inconsistent, why haven’t we standardized it, phoneticized it, brought it into line? How many brave linguists have ever had the courage to state, in a declaration of phonetic revolt: “Enough is enuf”? The answer: many. In the comic annals of linguistic history, legions of rebel wordsmiths have died on the hill of spelling reform, risking their reputations to bring English into the realm of the rational. This book is about them: Mark Twain, Ben Franklin, Eliza Burnz, C. S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin, and the innumerable others on both sides of the Atlantic who, for a time in their life, became fanatically occupied with writing thru instead of through, tho for though, laf for laugh, beleev for believe, and dawter for daughter (and tried futilely to get everyone around them to do it too). Henry takes his humorous and informative chronicle right up to today as the language seems to naturally be simplifying to fit the needs of our changing world thanks to technology—from texting to Twitter and emojis, the Simplified Spelling Movement may finally be having its day.

About the Author

Gabe Henry is the author of Eating Salad Drunk: Haikus for the Burnout Age by Comedy Greats and the history-humor compendium What the Fact?! 365 Strange Days in History. Eating Salad Drunk was featured in The New Yorker in February 2022 (“A Smattering of Haiku for the Burnout Age”) and ranked one of Vulture’s Best Comedy Books of 2022. Henry’s work has been published in New York Magazine, The Weekly Humorist, The New Yorker, Light Poetry Magazine, and the Motion Picture Association’s magazine The Credits. In 2021 he co-created the trivia gameshow “JeoPARTY” (jeh-PAR-tee) with NPR’s Ophira Eisenberg. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.