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Orthography   Listen
noun
Orthography  n.  
1.
The art or practice of writing words with the proper letters, according to standard usage; conventionally correct spelling; also, mode of spelling; as, his orthography is vicious. "When spelling no longer follows the pronunciation, but is hardened into orthography."
2.
The part of grammar which treats of the letters, and of the art of spelling words correctly.
3.
A drawing in correct projection, especially an elevation or a vertical section.
4.
The method of spelling the words of a particular language; the system of symbols used for writing a language.
5.
The branch of linguistics concerned with how languages are written.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Orthography" Quotes from Famous Books



... and encircling his brow was a moist red line that told of a silk hat but lately doffed. "Give the gentleman a cup of tea," said he to Mesrour, looking up from the note, which now completed, he was perusing with an air that indicated satisfaction with its chirography, orthography, and literary style. At last, placing it in an envelope and affixing thereto a seal, he turned and ordering Mesrour to give Mr. Middleton another cup of tea, he lighted a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... the Fragment Contents, size, vellum, binding Ruling Relation of the six leaves to the rest of the manuscript Original size of the manuscript Disposition Ornamentation Corrections Syllabification Orthography Abbreviations Authenticity of the six ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... situation; and please those who can be pleased with them, by the marvellous, and not by the nature of such a combination. In serious poetry, a man of the middling or lower order must necessarily lay aside a great deal of his ordinary language; he must avoid errors in grammar and orthography; and steer clear of the cant of particular professions, and of every impropriety that is ludicrous or disgusting: nay, he must speak in good verse, and observe all the graces in prosody and collocation. After all this, it may not be very easy to say how ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... for innovations in orthography, certain abbreviations, and the occasional substitution of figures for large numerals, fractions, and decimals, made necessary by limited space, and in some cases to more lucidly show tables and statistics. From the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... or a systematic description of all the ports which were visited, as one might expect in a roteiro. There is no reason to believe that it was written by Vasco da Gama. An officer in such high authority would not be likely to write his narrative anonymously. The faulty and variable orthography of the roteiro also renders improbable the hypothesis that Vasco da ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont

... and intellectual similarity, and that, when the Zu-Zu and her sisterhood plunge their white arms elbow-deep into so many fortunes, and rule the world right and left as they do, they could also sound their H's properly, and knew a little orthography, if they could not be changed into such queens of grace, of intellect, of sovereign mind and splendid wit as were their prototypes when she whose name they debase held her rule in the City of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... necessary to abandon a literal and exact translation of Heyne for several reasons, and among others from the fact that Heyne seems to be wrong in the translation of some of his illustrative quotations, and even translates the same passage in two or three different ways under different headings. The orthography of his glossary differs considerably from the orthography of his text. He fails to discriminate with due nicety the meanings of many of the words in his vocabulary, while criticism more recent than his latest edition (1879) has illustrated or overthrown several of his renderings. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... everything was plastered. Their antiquity is further certified by some of them being in the Oscan dialect; while those in Latin are distinguished from more recent ones in the same language by the forms of the letters, by the names which appear in them, and by archaisms in grammar and orthography. Inscriptions in the Greek tongue are rare, though the letters of the Greek alphabet, scratched on walls at a little height from the ground, and thus evidently the work of school-boys, show that Greek must have been ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... I. O. U.—The law is not particular as to orthography; in fact, it distinctly refuses to recognize the existence of that delightful science. You may bring your action against Mr. Jacob Phillips, under the fanciful denomination of Jaycobb Fillipse, if you like, and the law won't care, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... During a residence of some years in France, I had heard it remarked, more than once, by persons who appeared hostile to the Napoleon dynasty, that its great founder had, in his bulletins and other public documents, shown an unaccountable ignorance of the common rules of orthography: but I had never seen the assertion put forth by any competent writer until I met with the remarks of Macaulay, already quoted by me, Vol. viii., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... when he had once adopted them they remained fixed in his mind, although they were pronounced properly a hundred times a day in his hearing; but he would have been struck if others had used them as he had altered them. It was the same thing with respect to orthography; in general he did not attend to it, yet if the copies which were made contained any faults of spelling he would have complained of it. One day Napoleon said to Las Cases, "Your orthography is not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... pages of the book, and at odd times set some type.... The penmanship of the copy furnished was good, but the grammar, spelling and punctuation were done by John H. Gilbert, who was chief compositor in the office. I have heard him swear many a time at the syntax and orthography of Cowdery, and declare that he would not set another line of the type. There were no paragraphs, no punctuation and no capitals. All that was done in the printing office, and what a time there used to be in straightening sentences out, too. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... [Hebrew: w]; and that the [Hebrew: i] in [Hebrew: wilh] is unessential, is proved by the circumstance that the name of the place is often written [Hebrew: wlh], and that even in Gen. xlix. 10, a number of manuscripts have this orthography. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... dates from 1564, and is therefore a fairly good one, since parochial registers were only first enjoined in the reign of Henry VIII., 1530–1538. The registers contain some peculiar entries, and exhibit a remarkable orthography, if such a term can be applied to what would more correctly be called orthography. Of these entries one is as follows:—The churchyard fence was repaired by lengths in 1760, each parishioner (of any substance) taking a length; a list of their names ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... contained some truly original lines the enlightened cannot doubt; and I think I may assert without fear of contradiction that Betty did in these lines, notwithstanding they evinced a sovereign contempt for orthography and versification, discover a deep knowledge of diplomacy. I say this for the reason that her diction could be construed to mean anything but what she intended; albeit there was such an openness about it generally that any clever gentleman ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... are selected and arranged, the first part of the work to be considered is the orthography, which was long vague and uncertain; which at last, when its fluctuation ceased, was in many cases settled but by accident; and in which, according to your Lordship's observation, there is still great uncertainty among the best criticks; nor is it easy to state ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... punctuation." The insulted poet took a deep revenge for the contemptuous treatment he had received from the modern Stagirite. The "peculiarities" betray most evident marks of the self-taught lawyer; the orthography and the double letters were minted in the office. [Thus he speaks of Addison as this "exact Mr. of propriety," and of his own studies of the English poets "to trace them to their sources; and observe what oar, as well as what slime and gravel they brought ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Revolution, and The Wanderings of our Fat Contributor,—the first of which is, and the latter is not, perpetuated in his works. Our old friend Jeames Yellowplush, or De la Pluche,—for we cannot for a moment doubt that he is the same Jeames,—is very prolific, and as excellent in his orthography, his sense, and satire, as ever. These papers began with The Lucky Speculator. He lives in The Albany; he hires a brougham; and is devoted to Miss Emily Flimsey, the daughter of Sir George, who ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... number of Sanskrit words in Javanese and Malay—especially in the first of these—than in the other cultivated languages, from their existing in greater purity in the Javanese and Malay, and from the errors of these two languages, both as to sense and orthography, having been copied by all the other tongues. An approximation to the proportions of Sanskrit existing in some of the principal languages will show that the amount constantly diminishes as we recede from Java and Sumatra, until all vestiges of it disappear in the dialects of Polynesia. ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell

... was at this low point, Providence raised up a deliverer in the person of a pure, simple-hearted, and pious maiden of Domremy in Lorraine, seventeen years of age, Jeanne Dare by name (the name Joan of Arc being merely a mistake in orthography). The tales of suffering that she had heard deeply moved her. She felt herself called of Heaven to liberate France. She fancied that angels' voices bade her undertake this holy mission. Her own undoubting faith aroused faith in others. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Philip sat in his elbow-chairs writing his apostilles, improving himself and his secretaries in orthography, but chiefly confining his attention to the affairs of France. The departed Mucio's brother Mayenne was installed as chief stipendiary of Spain and lieutenant-general for the League in France, until Philip should determine within himself in what form to assume ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... be more striking than the contrast between the illiterate locutions and the eccentric orthography of Fenella's letters and the subtle remarks and speculations upon the symbols of nature.—the dukkeripen of the woods, the streams, the stars, and the winds. But when I came to analyse the theories of man's place in nature expressed in the ignorant language of this ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... with the text published by Professor Horstman from the Camb. MS Dd. v. 55. As the object of this book is not to offer a Middle English text to students, but a small contribution to mystical literature, the orthography has been completely modernised, while I have attempted to retain enough of the original language to preserve ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various

... into English. Had they been left as they were written, they would have been half unintelligible. The editor however has used his own judgment, in suffering various words to retain their primitive dress; the better to preserve what would otherwise have been too much unlike its author, had the orthography been rendered perfect. It would have been assassination to have omitted any of the dialectic or cant terms, in which this honest Abimelech takes so much delight: for which reason ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... unable to pronounce the word according to any authorized orthography, as it was never my good fortune to see the word in print. I am not informed whether or not the acute accent is ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... spelling exists in the writing of the name of Timbuctoo. M. Jomard, Member of the French Institute, gives ‮تِيم٘بُك٘تُ‬ but says he does not think that this word when properly written contains the ‮ي‬. He thinks, however, we may be satisfied with the orthography of ‮تِم٘بُك٘تُ‬. And he adds, "I know that Batouta writes Tenboctou, n being used for m." I have found two ways of spelling Timbuctoo in The Desert, viz., ‮تِن٘بُك٘تُوا‬, and ‮تِن٘بُك٘تُا‬, and they both agree with Batouta. We may, therefore, consider Batouta's style of spelling the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... press, Though thence borne back, as hopeless of success. What honest critic e'er could credit eligible, Riddles to his researches unintelligible? When ready caution guards the lit'rate realm, Never shall foreign floods these isles o'erwhelm: Orthography the mother-tongue shall give, Ever, as every where, with Truth to live; Truth, Reason, Beauty shall o'erspread the nation; Shall solve the RIDDLE, ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston

... to the spelling: Having always been an ardent believer in the reformation of our present preposterous system—or rather, no system—of orthography, I am anxious to do whatever lies in my power to promote it. In the following pages the spelling is simplified to the last degree allowed by Webster. I hope that the time is near when even that advanced spelling reformer will be left far in the rear by the progress of a people thoroughly weary ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Academy, Dotheboys Hall at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single-stick, if required, writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms twenty guineas ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... meanings of a word are grouped according to their frequency in modern usage, so that obsolescent and obsolete meanings can be distinguished at a glance by their position at the end of the article. The new German orthography has been adopted with certain modifications which seem to settle the points ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... effects were produced by cacography or bad spelling, but there was genius in the wildly erratic way in which he handled even this rather low order of humor. It is a curious commentary on the wretchedness of our English orthography that the phonetic spelling of a word, as for example, wuz for was, should be {567} in itself an occasion of mirth. Other verbal effects of a different kind were among his devices, as in the passage where the seventeen widows of a deceased ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... The orthography of all the names, as well as their prosodic accent, has been preserved in their ancient form; and accordingly, an index has been appended to ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier

... The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to reduce it to some certain standard. The rule laid down for the discharge of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive; but ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Slow Triumph of Truth Old Industrial Education An Incomparable "Medical Outlaw" Educational.—Educational Reform in England; Dead Languages Vanishing; Higher Education of Women; Bad Sunday-School Books; Our Barbarous Orthography Critical.—European Barbarism; Boston Civilization; Monopoly; Woman's Drudgery; Christian Civilization; Walt Whitman; Temperance Scientific.—Extension of Astronomy; A New Basis for Chemistry; Chloroform in Hydrophobia; The Water Question; Progress of Homoeopathy: ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... ladies (in French) are copied by the Prince's hand, nor has he improved the orthography. I ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... found in the annals of that region a king named Brus, which he chooses to consider the genuine orthography of the name. This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the court ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... am indolent. I would not spare any labor to do my duty; that single thought would solace me more than any pleasures the senses could enjoy. I find I could not translate the manuscript well. If it were not a manuscript I should not be so easily intimidated; but the hand, and errors in orthography or abbreviations, are a stumbling-block at the first setting out. I cannot bear to do anything I cannot do well; and I should lose time ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... pardon, I mean your kin, is not he? I am sure he is not your friend;—well, he has had an assembly, and he would write all the cards himself, and every one of them was to desire he's company and she's company, with other pieces of curious orthography. Adieu, dear George! I wish you a merry farm, as the children say at Vauxhall. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... Hugh and I will be ready to take a ride with you. I can instruct him in orthography, geography, botany, and the natural sciences, as ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... found in it many errors, and some antiquities of orthography, which it has not been deemed advisable to correct. It is believed that the Journal will be more entertaining in its original state than it would be with the aid of any amendments that we might make. It is certainly the work of ...
— Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 • Lucinda Lee Orr

... modern usage, are printed with all the peculiarities of eighteenth century orthography. It was felt that they would lose their quaintness and charm if Holbach's somewhat fantastic English were trifled with or his spelling, capitalization and ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing

... rather a ponderous name to give a comparatively small body of water, even though the Father of Waters here took his first start in the world. The explorer, therefore, conceived the idea of uniting the last two syllables of the first word with the first syllable of the second, thus, by a novel mode of orthography, forming a name which might easily pass for one of Indian origin—Itasca. A person versed in orthographical science would probably perceive at once that the name did not belong to the same family of harsh Indian appellations which ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... accounting for such alleged variations of gender, and number, and case, than by forgery, when the very forger himself must have seen them? Or do they seriously prefer some letter of the Gaelic alphabet to a law of nature? Will they forego the facts of an epoch, for the orthography of a syllable? If so, then the friends of Ossian, who is one great mass of facts, must turn once more to the common sense of the public, and leave his etymological detractors at leisure to indulge their own predilections, and ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various

... might perhaps be conveyed by the following instances, taken at random: Dywyll, Dydd, Gwyddna, Llwyn, Gwyrliw, &c. But it will be dispelled by an orthography adapted to the pronunciation; thus ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... Murger a German physiognomy by writing it Muerger. As Frenchmen treat their names with as much freedom as we use towards old gloves, Murger instantly adopted Monsieur Houssaye's suggestion, and clung as long as he lived to the new orthography of his name. He began to find it less difficult to procure each day his daily bread, but still the gaunt wolf, Poverty, continued to glare on him. "Our existence," he said, "is like a ballad which has several couplets; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... (we love to be precise in matters concerning orthography) in a neat, round, clerk-like hand, which, like Mr. Winterblossom's character, in many particulars was most accurate and commonplace, though betraying an affectation both of flourish ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... good to answer me in the same. Not that I am apprehensive of your forgetting to speak French: since it is probable that two-thirds of our daily prattle is in that language; and because, if you leave off writing French, you may perhaps neglect that grammatical purity, and accurate orthography, which, in other languages, you excel in; and really, even in French, it is better to write well than ill. However, as this is a language very proper for sprightly, gay subjects, I shall conform to that, and reserve those which are serious for English. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... stronger than those of the other sex. And upon this occasion, was first instituted in London, that famous cry of "FLOUNDERS." But the criers were particularly directed to pronounce the word "Flaunders," and not "Flounders." For, the country which we now by corruption call Flanders, is in its true orthography spelt Flaunders, as may be obvious to all who read old English books. I say, from hence begun that thundering cry, which hath ever since stunned the ears of all London, made so many children fall into fits, and women miscarry; "Come buy my fresh flaunders, curious ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... an exaggerated development of the organs of self-will. And the man has two names. That by which he is known to his soldiers, his familiar name, is Round-head; and his real name, received from brave and worthy parents, Georges Cadudal, or rather Cadoudal, tradition having changed the orthography of a name that is ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... if we had a parcel of idiots in our care. The blunders that these aspiring young ladies and gentlemen make in orthography are enough to set ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... or even a heathen author. He reads slowly and clearly at a measured rate while all the others seated at their desks take down his words, and thus perhaps a score of copies are made at once. Alcuin's observant eye watches each in turn, and his correcting hand points out the mistakes in orthography and punctuation. The master of Charles the Great, in that true humility that is the charm of his whole behavior, makes himself the writing-master of his monks, stooping to the drudgery of faithfully and gently correcting their many puerile ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... forsake ourselves." It then only remains to show what is meant by a scarre, which signifies here anything that causes surprise or alarm; what we should now write a scare. Shakspeare has used the same orthography, scarr'd, i.e. scared, in Coriolanus and in Winter's Tale. There is also abundant evidence that this was its old orthography, indicative of the broad sound the word then had, and which it still retains in the north. Palsgrave ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... brief spaces of repose that his sufferings allowed him, the child attended a commercial school at Vernon. There he learned orthography and arithmetic. His science was limited to the four rules, and a very superficial knowledge of grammar. Later on, he took lessons in writing and bookkeeping. Madame Raquin began to tremble when advised to send her son to college. She knew he would die if ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... He was by no means illiterate. His writing is trim, his accounts in good form and correctly figured. But it was more a fashion in that day to spell as pronounced, and his orthography gives us a personal sense of ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... must get rich by his invention, he would at least save for himself the fame of it. The result of his literary labors was an autobiography of great frankness and detail, extending to several hundred pages, and embracing almost every conceivable violation of standard English orthography, with which he seems to have had very little acquaintance or sympathy. It was placed under seal in the Philadelphia Library, not to be opened for thirty years. At the expiration of that period, in 1823, the seal was broken, and the quaint old manuscript, with the stamp of honest truth on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... haue walkt ten mile afoot, to see a good armor, and now will he lie ten nights awake caruing the fashion of a new dublet: he was wont to speake plaine, & to the purpose (like an honest man & a souldier) and now is he turn'd orthography, his words are a very fantasticall banquet, iust so many strange dishes: may I be so conuerted, & see with these eyes? I cannot tell, I thinke not: I will not bee sworne, but loue may transforme me to an oyster, but Ile take my oath ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Ritchie's book for the use of American schools it has seemed best to make extensive changes. Long vowels have been marked throughout, and the orthography of Latin words has been brought into conformity with our practice. Many liberties have been taken with the text itself, especially in the latter part, in the way of making it approximate more closely to ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.

... it is, 'Printed by and for W. Onley; and are to be sold by C. Bates, at the sign of the Sun and Bible, in Pye Corner.' The very antiquated orthography adopted in some editions does not rest on any authority. For two tunes to The ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... fifteen hundred monosyllables, none of which contain more than five letters. It is believed that the pupil can easily acquire a thorough knowledge of the meaning and use of these words, in the reading exercises, as well as their orthography and pronunciation in the lists, as they are all arranged with regard to their formation, number ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman

... Rules for the Figure of Words Observations on Figure of Words On the Identity of Words Errors concerning Figure Promiscuous Errors in Figure Chapter IV. Of Spelling Rules for Spelling Observations on Spelling Errors in Spelling Promiscuous Errors in Spelling Chapter V. Questions on Orthography Chapter VI Exercises ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... of helping to establish a much-desired standard of nomenclature, I have followed the generic names adopted by the authors of The Genera Plantarum, and the specific names and orthography, as far as I have been able, of the Index Kewensis; and where possible I have given the synonyms, the date of introduction, and the native country. The alphabetical arrangement that has been adopted, both with regard to the genera and species, it is hoped, ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... gallery was a school of boys, whom as we entered we heard humming over the bitter honey which childhood is obliged to gather from the opening flowers of orthography. When we passed out, the master gave these poor busy bees an atom of holiday, and they all swarmed forth together to look at the strangers. The teacher was a long, lank man, in a black threadbare coat, and a skull-cap—exactly ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... modes of spelling the Oriental names, is wholly unnecessary. Harem, turned into Hhareem—Dervish into Derweesh—Mameluke into Memlook, give no new ideas, and only add perplexity to our knowledge of the name. These words, with a crowd of others, have already been fixed in English orthography by their natural pronunciation; and the attempt to change them always renders their pronunciation—which is, after all, the only important point—less true to the original. On the whole, the "overland passage" seems to require immense improvements. But ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... work before us, the nautical import of the terms is duly considered, and the orthography, as far as feasible, is ruled by authority and custom, with an occasional slight glance at the probable etymology of the words—slight, because derivation is a seductive and frequently illusory pilot. Our language is said to have ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... drawn upon in the majority of cases, and nearly all of these are the most recent attainable. Whenever it has not been possible to cite original and recent works, the author has quoted only such as are most standard and trustworthy. In the choice of orthography of proper names and numeral words, the forms have, in almost all cases, been written as they were found, with no attempt to reduce them to a systematic English basis. In many instances this would have been quite impossible; ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant

... the indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of 1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an assistant surgeon. Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... piece of cane, and a minute later on the salt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needle-work she will be found to have realized her friends' fondest wishes. In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful and undeviating use of the back-board, for four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... maritime nation—at least all whose errand has led them along the eastern edge of the Atlantic—have had reason to regret approximation to those shores, known in ship parlance as the Barbary coast; but which, with a slight alteration in the orthography, might ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid

... replied Harry; "but I wish they would make the orthography of those native names a little easier. That's the only fault I have ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... Francisco Lopez de Gomara; but as an original document, very little freedom has been assumed in lopping these redundancies. The whole has been carefully collated with the history of the same subject by Clavigero, and with the recent interesting work of Humbolt, so as to ascertain the proper orthography of the Mexican names of persons, places, and things, and to illustrate or correct circumstances and accounts of events, wherever that seemed necessary. Diaz commences his work with his own embarkation from Spain in 1514, and gives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... with the other things, sir,' he said, striking the table lightly with his clenched fist. 'There's handwriting, there's orthography, there's arithmetic; I'm not afraid of one of 'em, as Mr Biffen 'll tell you, sir. But when it comes to compersition, that brings out the sweat on my forehead, I ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... $900 a year," these places being below the grade of clerkships of class 1; and all applicants for such positions shall be examined in (1) penmanship, (2) copying, (3) elements of English grammar, chiefly orthography, and (4) fundamental rules of arithmetic, except that mere counters may be examined only in the fundamental rules of arithmetic and as to their facility in counting money; and those found competent by such examination shall be reported in the order of their excellence as eligible ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... but more especially, as far as my own knowledge goes, in Kent, for the keepers, when they wish to drive and collect the deer to one spot, to lay down for this purpose what they call sewells (I may be wrong as to the orthography), which are simply long lines with feathers attached at intervals, somewhat after the fashion of the tails of kites. These "sewells," when stretched at length on the ground, the herd of deer will very rarely pass; but on coming up will check themselves ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... from good judges, that the language used by Farmer Gray in this story appears superior to his condition, we insert a letter which we lately received from him; matter, manner, and orthography his own. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... Stebbins as Supervisor. The master had been struck with the size of the black type in which this placard was printed, and with a shrewd perception of its value to the round wandering eyes of his smaller pupils, allowed it to remain as a pleasing example of orthography. Unfortunately, although subdivided and spelt by them in its separate letters with painful and perfect accuracy, it was collectively known as "Wally," and its general ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... pleaded custom in behalf of C, observing, that, by the Doctor's rule, we ought to change pudding into budding, because it is derived from the French word boudin; and in that case why not retain the original orthography and pronunciation of all the foreign words we have adopted, by which means our language would become a dissonant jargon without standard or propriety? The controversy was referred to us; and Banter, notwithstanding his real opinion to the contrary, decided it in favour ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... [CE] The orthography of some of these words differs from the modern way of spelling them; and we have no means of ascertaining the accuracy of Bradford's copy from the original letter. This passage may ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... work of an author to whom all the critics have adjudged the praise of a perfect acquaintance with the epoch which he has chosen for the scene of his drama. Russian critics, some of whom have reproached M. Lajetchnikoff with certain faults of style, and in particular with innovations on orthography, have all united in conceding to him the merit of great historical accuracy—not only as regards the events and characters of his story, but even in the less important ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution: thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice: thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory: thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity: thou butcher, imbruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography: thou arch-heretic in pronunciation: thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis: thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences: thou squeaking dissonance of cadence: thou pimp of gender: thou Lion Herald to silly etymology: thou antipode of grammar: thou executioner of construction: ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... credited by everyone who has properly explored the profundity of his mind. The facility and vehemence of his composition was such, that when he had once conceived a subject, he wrote as from an internal pattern, without paying much attention to the orthography, or reviewing what he had written; for the celestial vigour of his intellect rendered him incapable of trifling concerns, and in this respect, inferior to common understandings, as the eagle, which in its bold flight pierces the clouds, skims the surface of the earth with less ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... orthography of geographical names I have adopted the course advised by the Royal Geographical Society—viz., to give the names their true sound as they are locally pronounced, and I have made no exception even for the grand and poetic "Himahlya" which is in English usually ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... meetings, speaks no more as twenty minutes, or not! I have prepared a speech on the root of all evil that will not dake so mooch dime as the friends who have speak!" The devil, that means calumniator, by whom this reporter was so possessed, that he knew neither orthography nor grammar, was not so bad as the devil, by whom the evening 'Telegraph' was possessed. He, in the service of the heads of the Convention, calls me "the member from Germany," also "the teutonic individual," and what he reports, he so reports for the benefit ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar

... not say that this treatise was complete in the sense usually attached to the word grammar. There is no mention of orthography or of lexicology; but all that is the very essence of language, that from which no language, no idiom can escape—the constituent parts of speech—are examined and investigated from a philosophic and psychologic point of view. Just ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... priest, tirannous prelate, nor godlesse cater-cap; but defieth all the race of them," including "a challenge" to meet them personally; was probably one of their latest efforts. The printing and the orthography show all the imperfections of that haste in which they were forced to print this work. As they lost their strength, they were getting more venomous. Among the little Martins disturbed in the hour of parturition, but already christened, there were: "Episto Mastix;" "The Lives and Doings of English ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... est idem quod malum. Inde dicitur kathodemon, i.e. spiritus malignus seu dyabolus, et venit a kathon, i.e. malum, et demon, sciens, quasi mala sciens.' You will notice also the inconstancy of h, and the indifference to orthography which allows the same word to appear as katademon in the text and kathodemon ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... this, and it has been a very pleasing one: to revise the MS. making occasionally corrections with respect to Orthography, and sometimes in the grammatical construction. The corrections, in point of Grammar, reduce themselves almost wholly to a circumstance of provincial usage, which even well educated persons in Suffolk and Norfolk ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... treated Hongi as a heathen soul to be saved, and this was not what he wanted. Together they went to Cambridge, and here Kendall found scope for his abilities in furnishing to Professor Lee the materials for a scientific orthography of the Maori language. He stayed on at Cambridge to prepare for Holy Orders, which the Society had agreed that he should receive. The chiefs meanwhile were entertained at the houses of nobles and prelates ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... rose from a variegated nosegay, and leaving only its thorny stem. Boquet is heard at times in well-upholstered drawing-rooms, and may even be seen in print. Offensive in its mutilated shape, it smells sweet again when restored to its native orthography. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... lengthy epistles I am forced to endure from a little shop girl whom I have robbed from a jealous banker. I amuse myself by making her the rage, and enjoy the poor creature's ecstasies immensely! It is so delightful to make others happy. Her grammar is outrageous, however. Ah! my friend, what orthography! it is of the antediluvian, innocent style; such as Mother Eve must have used—but if your Mariette cannot write, who knows but her secretary may have misinterpreted ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue

... The orthography of the word by which they are generally designated, is not very well settled. It has been written Shawanos, Sawanos, Shawaneu, Shawnees and Shawanoes, which last method of spelling the word, will be followed in the pages of ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... has just come to me this morning from Whinstane Sandy, written in lead-pencil. It said, with an orthography all its own, that Duncan had been in bed for two weeks with what they thought was pneumonia, but was up again and able to eat something, and not to worry. It seemed a confident and cheerful message at first, but the oftener I read ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... scarcely have recognized his own name in the Jesuit spelling,—"Le Sieur de Houinslaud." In his journal of 1650 Druilletes is more successful in his orthography, and spells it ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... famous tale, Cinderella's slipper, which was no doubt of vair (the fur), is said to have been made of verre (glass). Lately one of our most distinguished poets was obliged to establish the true orthography of the word for the instruction of his brother-feuilletonists in giving an account of the opera of the "Cenerentola," where the symbolic slipper has been replaced by a ring, which symbolizes ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... founded in 1138, for canons of the Praemonstratensian order. Its Celtic name denotes its antiquity, as it also tends to prove that this part of the country was covered with timber. The word, arden, signified a forest, and was thence applied, with a slight variation in orthography, to the largest forest in England, and to the more celebrated forest in the vicinity of Liege. According to tradition, the Norman ardennes consisted: of chesnut-trees. De Bourgueville tells us that timber of this description is the principal material ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... read will forget the Doctor's philological contributions towards an amended system of English orthography. Assuming the propriety of discarding all reference to the etymology of words, when engaged in spelling them, and desirous, as a philological reformer, to establish a truly British language, he proposes introducing a distinction of genders, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... the Nabob received a note from Hemerlingue, almost undecipherable with its little fly-tracks, complicated by abbreviations more or less commercial, behind which the ex-sutler concealed his absolute lack of orthography: ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... retained the common orthography of this word, though Amazons, used by Bates, is doubtless more correct, as more akin to ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... scrawl there is just here, my lord, and the blot; I had written without thinking, M. Rudolph, as I used to say, and I have scratched it out. I hope, by the way, that you will find my writing has improved much, as well as my orthography, for Germain always shows me how, and I no longer make great blots stretching all across, as when ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... is the customary salutation when drinking a health. I have slightly changed the orthography of the word, in order ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... curious that people do not grumble more at having to spell correctly. Yet one may ask, Do we not a little over-estimate the value of orthography? This is a natural reflection enough when the maker of artless happy phrases has been ransacking the dictionary for some elusive wretch of a word which in the end proves to be not yet naturalised, or ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... trouble has been taken to ascertain the true form and force of Polo's spelling of Oriental names and technical expressions, it will be found that they are in the main as accurate as Italian lips and orthography will admit, and not justly liable either to those disparaging epithets[4] or to those exegetical distortions which have been too often applied to them. Thus, for example, Cocacin, Ghel or Ghelan, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Tengwar of Feanor, a table of letterforms resembling the beautiful Celtic half-uncial hand of the "Book of Kells". Invented and described by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The Lord of The Rings" as an orthography for his fictional 'elvish' languages, this system (which is both visually and phonetically {elegant}) has long fascinated hackers (who tend to be intrigued by artificial languages in general). It is traditional for graphics printers, plotters, window systems, and the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... there is no intellectual movement in South Italy. But he himself, at the very close of his life, in 1902, signs himself Ger. de Rhada. So this village of Macchia is spelt indifferently by Albanians as Maki or Makji. They have a fine Elizabethan contempt for orthography—as well they may have, with their thirty alphabets.] a flame-like patriot in whom the tempestuous aspirations of modern Albania took shape. The ideal pursued during his long life was the regeneration of his country; and if the attention of international congresses and linguists and folklorists is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... the future grew demoralised. The pillars of state of English orthography at least seemed destined to totter. The ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin

... editor of Astley's Collection has altered the orthography of this name to Shemina seki. In modern maps, we find a town named Sunono sequi, on one side of these straits, which divide the island of Kiusiu from the south-west end of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... we are like the Egyptians, who never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the racket was so familiar to them! The age "capers in its own fee simple" and cries with the Host in "The Merry Devil of Edmonton," "Away with punctilios and orthography!" Write poetry now! Thank you, my ancient friend! "My fiddlestick cannot play without rosin." To be sure, I am, like most minstrels, ready for an offer; and should any lover ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... of power to compel this delicate and shrinking female to stand once more in the pillory of the law; or, to put "ELISHA'S" orthography to a second test by a crucial and censorious public. Whatever may be the result of all this indifference to the sanctity of private character and correct spelling, PUNCHINELLO wishes to put upon record his total disapproval ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... indispensable and most appreciated of eighteenth century accomplishments—fine writing. Her handwriting, of which a fac-simile is here shown, was far better than that of most girls of twelve to-day; with truth and justice could Anna say, "Aunt says I can write pretily." Her orthography was quite equal to that of grown persons of her time, and her English as good as that of Mercy Warren, ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... and Cayugas, had a peril of their own to encounter. The central nation, the Onondagas, were then under the control of a dreaded chief, whose name is variously given, Atotarho, Watatotahlo, Tododaho, according to the dialect of the speaker and the orthography of the writer. He was a man of great force of character and of formidable qualities,—haughty, ambitious, crafty and bold,—a determined and successful warrior, and at home, so far as the constitution of an Indian tribe would allow, a stern and remorseless tyrant. He tolerated no ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale

... higher orders. In a family of young ladies, you will but rarely meet with one who can accurately write her own language; and in general, in their cards of invitation, or in those letters of ceremony, which you will frequently receive, they will send you specimens of orthography, which, in their defiance of every established rule, are as amusing as Mrs Win. Jenkins' observations on that grave and useful gentleman, Mr Apias Corkus. Amongst the boys, any thing like a finished education was as little to be expected; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... of girls—of all ages from five to twenty-five—begin to troop down to the schoolhouse in their reddest Sunday petticoats. It is remarkable that these young women are willing to spend their one afternoon of freedom in laborious studies of orthography for no reason but a vague reverence for the Gaelic. It is true that they owe this reverence, or most of it, to the influence of some recent visitors, yet the fact that they feel such an influence so keenly ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... but in practically every case there was really nothing to do but to follow them silently. For it would be absurd, in the present edition, to chronicle solemnly the rectification of mere misprints like "Hoxton" for "Hexton", or the change from "was never" to "never was". In some points of orthography "Chelsea" and "Chelsey", for instance, Thackeray never reached full consistency, and he has sometimes been caught in the intricacies of the Castlewood relations and nomenclature, &c. So, too, Walcote, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... they had subsequently the kindness to restore: the greater part, however, consisting of descriptions of scenery, sketches of character, etc., has been supplied from memory. In various instances I have omitted the names of places, which I have either forgotten, or of whose orthography I am uncertain. The work, as it at present exists, was written in a solitary hamlet in a remote part of England, where I had neither books to consult, nor friends of whose opinion or advice I could ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... was a spelling reformer, one of the many writers who, from early Elizabethan times onwards, have been critical of traditional English orthography and have made proposals for improving it. Although nothing that could be called a spelling-reform "movement" existed until the nineteenth century, there were earlier periods when the subject was much in the air, when a number of people were writing about it and reading and discussing each ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.

... refused, but hearing at last of a situation which she thought might please her, she applied for it by letter. But alas, the mistake she made when she abandoned the spelling-book for the piano, again stood in the way, for no one would employ a teacher so lamentably ignorant of orthography. Nor is it at all probable she will ever rise higher than her present position—that of a plain sewer—until she goes back to first principles, and commences again the despised column beginning ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes

... discontent. The result, however, he adds, is exactly the reverse; and it would be a singular anomaly in the constitution of the moral world were it otherwise. He who is instructed in, and is familiar with grammar and orthography, writes and spells so easily and accurately as scarcely to be conscious of attending to the rules by which he is guided; while he, on the contrary, who is not instructed in either, and knows not how to arrange his sentences, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... perplexed to decide how the names of some of our eminent men ought to be written; and we find that they are even now written diversely. The truth is, that our orthography was so long unsettled among us, that it appears by various documents of the times which I have seen, that persons were at a loss how to write their own names, and most certainly have written them variously. I have sometimes suspected that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... author permission to have the autograph of Duke Hildebrod engraved as an illustration of this passage. Unhappily, being rigorous as Ritson himself in adhering to the very letter of his copy, the worthy Doctor clogged his munificence with the condition that we should adopt the Duke's orthography, and entitle the work "The Fortunes of Niggle," with which stipulation we did not think it necessary to comply.] This reverend gentleman had been whispering for a minute or two, not with the captain, but ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... every word will he given in a strictly feminine sense, and the orthography, as a point of which ladies like to be properly independent, will be studiously suppressed. The whole to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... not easy to read, in the dim light of the Colonel's Bed, thanks to its crabbed orthography and its long formal phrasing, but gradually I made out ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... clearness of expression and simplicity of grammar. It would also appear that it was copied from another Septuagint Bible and was not written, as was frequently the case, from dictation. A second scribe has occasionally corrected some mistakes of orthography made by the original copyist. These are still to be distinguished by the different ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various



Words linked to "Orthography" :   alphabetic writing, punctuation mark, script, writing, hieroglyphic, hieroglyph, point system, hyphenation, punctuation, picture writing



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