This is of course only my opinion, but I think unless it is a contemporary work, or at least fairly recent, you should be careful with changes. What may be considered correct by today's standards may not always have been the trend. The first record of an English language dictionary was for an English - Latin translation dictionary in the end of the 16th century. A commonly accepted English dictionary didn't come along until the early 1800's in the U.S. when Noah Webster published his ; and, in the mid 1800's when Samuel Johnson (Dictionary Johnson) published his in London. If you were to compare Webster's first with a contemporary one, you would find many spelling changes. Your example of realize is a perfect example, as when you look up realize in the Oxford English dictionary you find that realise is also an acceptable spelling. That ize ending is also interesting as it is one of those favored it seems for creating new words, changing them from a noun to a verb, which tends to cause many traditionalist heartburn. I heard it said once, and I have never been able to confirm it, that JFK added the word prioritize to the English language by using it in a speech. That case, even if not true, brings up the discussion of different dialects of English. Aside from the numerous differences between American, British, Australian, Canadian, etc. English, you can't go from Maine to Alabama to Washington without running into many differences between spelling and meanings. So after all this long winded nonsense of mine, I would recommend being careful with spell checkers and in making changes.
Dave At 02:33 PM 3/23/2007, you wrote:
Faulkner, like many authors, invents words and also has very creative spelling which may or may not be caught by his publishers and the scanners or validaters. Even when caught, how does one decide on what to correct or not to correct. So far my choices have been hit or miss but as a rule I try to stick with his spelling even when it is just misspelling - he often uses s instead of z in words like realize and I try to leave them as I think he wrote them even if he had not meant to misspell the words. I am a devout believer in the idea that an author's intentions are irrelevant when dealing with what s/he actually wrote even if we know them. I have, however, heard a lot of the opposing point of view to admit that correcting misspellings is not altogether wrong.Having read so many misspelled papers by freshman composition students that I am not always sure of correct spelling, I often look up words but if you don't know the correct spelling looking up a word in a dictionary is not particularly easy. Thank heavens for Spell Checks but they, too, are not always reliable. I would welcome more comments on the subject.Amy omsm
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