The book opens with an odd fact of our time: we grow up having our writing corrected at every turn, and yet the actual writing most people do goes far beyond what is considered “correct English.” If we imagine a basic continuum of writing in English, it ranges from informal to formal, personal to impersonal, and interpersonal to informational writing. That range allows us to do all kinds of different things with writing. But only a small part of it is considered “correct,” because of what the book calls Language Regulation Mode. The introduction explains Language Regulation Mode, how it fixates on errors, and how it makes it hard to think about writing any other way. We learn to see writing only through the lens of writing myths, which tell us only some writing counts, and only some writers are smart and will succeed. Then, the introduction offers an alternative: Language Exploration Mode, which focuses on patterns instead of errors, and learning more about the diverse language of our world today--a continuum of informal digital writing, workplace writing, formal school writing, and otherwise, all correct for its purpose.

Myth 6, writing should be mastered in secondary school, starts the same time as the myth that most students cannot write, in the 20th century. This myth limits how we think about writing development, including who we think is responsible for it. Other consequences include that we ignore important differences between secondary and college writing, like the fact that secondary writing tasks tend to be brief, persuasive, and rigidly organized, while college writing tends to be multi-step, explanatory, and organized according to topic and genre. Closer to the truth is that writing development is a spiral rather than a line: it is ongoing, and not everything comes together at once. Also closer to the truth is that we can support the move from secondary to college writing by exploring their writing continuum patterns.

Borrowings in informal American English exhibit various modifications. Phonological changes involve the modification of their pronunciation to conform to the phonological rules of American English. Orthographical changes feature the change in spelling of borrowed expressions, with various stages of respelling or other modifications. Morphological changes include addition or removal of lexical material via standard wordbuilding processes such as lengthening or shortening. Semantic changes involve figuration and accompanying semantic shifting. Grammatical changes involve conversion in the part of speech. Finally, stylistic changes involve modification in the original register of informal borrowings which may shift their stylistic status in American English; while most borrowings exhibit no such change and retain their informal status, there are several exceptions.

The interest in early Latin developed mainly outside the field of normative grammar, particularly in authors who belonged to the tradition of scholarly or antiquarian writing. Varro’s encyclopaedic works testify to a unique effort to save uestigia of the cultural and historical past by means of linguistic operations. His approach soon lost its institutional character and was replaced by curiosity for rare minutiae, as in Pliny’s Dubius Sermo. Grammarians like Probus and Caper, whose orientation was philological rather than didactic, considered that the auctoritas of literary models made divergences from the norm or contemporary usage acceptable, and viewed uetustas as the area of experimental variation, both lexical and morphological, with respect to the usage of Republican writers. The inclusion of an immense corpus of literary quotations in comprehensive works (artes grammaticae) facilitated the adoption of an overall perspective that embraced the evolution of the linguistic system at all levels, and kept alive an awareness of the diachronic dimension of the language, which became increasingly profound in scholars like Priscian who read Terence in sixth-century Constantinople.

The discovery of eleven bronze rams belonging to war-ships off western Sicily, near the Egadi Islands, has produced an invaluable addition to our record of 3rd century BC Latin inscriptions. The archaeological and historical background as well as the palaeography and language of the Latin texts have been examined by J. Prag in three exemplary discussions (2014; 2017), which are expanded in this chapter. The question informing the present inquiry is whether these texts contribute to our knowledge of early Latin, or merely confirm what we know already about early pronunciation, morphology or syntax. The answer is not simple. Palaeographically and orthographically, the texts are very much in line with what one might expect of inscriptions of that time period. The many abbreviations mean that we cannot say much about their morphology. In principle, we should be able to say more about their pronunciation; but again, results are inconclusive. The texts are neither excessively archaic in appearance, nor excessively modern, and already at this early stage it is difficult to deduce pronunciation from orthography. But that in itself is a worthwhile result.

Latin loanwords (and codeswitches) were normally written in the Greek alphabet and took Greek endings. Their spellings started out as approximate transcriptions of the Latin pronunciation (not transliterations of the Latin spelling), but over time the Greek spellings could either remain fixed as the Latin pronunciation changed or be updated to reflect such changes. Most loanwords joined a Greek declensional class that closely resembled their Latin declension, but some changed declension or gender when borrowed. Some borrowings (including all verbs) acquired Greek suffixes as part of the borrowing process. Some loanwords were created by univerbating Latin phrases, making Latin-Latin compounds, or making Greek-Latin compounds with the Latin element taken directly from Latin. Derivatives could also be formed from previously-borrowed loanwords using any of the usual Greek derivation and compoundingprocesses.

“Print” analyzes the transition from manuscript to print culture and the formal conventions of modern Persianate writing. I trace the emergence and standardization of standard typography, orthography, and punctuation. Questioning the assumption that these aspects of print culture arose organically from the material conditions of modernization, I argue that they were fetishized as a kind of modernizing technology in and of themselves, and understood as productive of -- rather than products of -- modernization. In other words, Iranian and Indian literary scholars sought to modernize their prose by abandoning certain formal conventions of the Persianate manuscript tradition and adopting the conventions of European print: type rather than calligraphy, standardized spelling, and a new set of punctuation marks. The transition from manuscripts to a standardized print culture is typically presented as pragmatic, but it was shaped by various networks of affective attachments.

Many of us may take the ability to spell for granted; however, it is important to remember that spelling is a valuable but not easily attained skill. The English writing system can be particularly challenging to learn. It is generally agreed across languages that learning to read is easier than learning to spell (Bosman & Van Orden, 1997, in Treiman, 2017a).

This chapter seeks to unpack the complexities of learning to spell, including the foundations of knowledge and brain development that must be acquired to support the learning of this skill.

It is true that most teachers have limited knowledge of how words work in English. Linguistics hasn’t been a feature of their own schooling or their teacher education, and you can’t teach what you don’t know. The good news is that it isn’t hard to build the knowledge – in fact, it’s fun. In this chapter we look more closely at the linguistic threads that contribute to the rich tapestry of each word: etymology, orthography, phonology and morphology.

Chapter 3 outlined four key principles for teaching spelling: start with meaning; teach spelling explicitly; teach a repertoire of spelling knowledge; and integrate spelling instruction into all subject areas. This chapter introduces a 10-step process for planning and implementing a spelling program that is grounded in those four principles. Interspersed among the steps in the planning process are some of the questions teachers and parents frequently ask as they embark on the implementation process. What would your answers be? My responses are posted at the end of the chapter.

This chapter is focused on getting spelling assessment right, and expands upon steps 9 and 10 in the program planning process, introduced in chapter 4: assessing spelling in use, and keeping records of teaching and learning.

In this introductory chapter, fragments from the spelling stories of children, teachers, parents and carers will be used to paint a broad picture of what spelling is and what it isn’t. The following chapters provide more detailed guidance on how to work with children to build their spelling skills in productive ways.

Chapter 2 described how words work in English, and provided guidance on what to teach in spelling. Just as important as knowing what to teach is knowing how to teach, and that is the focus of this chapter. Many teachers simply teach spelling the way they were taught – through a list of words to be learned for an end-of-week assessment. However, research shows that this is an ineffective way to learn to spell. This chapter outlines four key principles for teaching spelling, each based on what the research tells us about how we learn to spell. 1 Start with meaning. 2 Teach spelling explicitly. 3 Teach a repertoire of spelling knowledge. 4 Integrate spelling instruction across all subject areas.