A review by psalmcat
Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman

5.0

Why are English words so WEIRD and varying in terms of spelling. The author traces the history of the language, but it much more concerned with why everyone gets so worked up about spelling, why there has to be a "right" way to spell things when we invented spelling in the first place as a tool.

This book completely changed the way I look at spelling problems other people have. I've always known Shakespeare "couldn't even spell his own name consistently", but maybe the point really is that he didn't CARE how it was spelled. The point is really to make us able to communicate without misunderstandings. Then people who need to control things got involved and started making rules and ... now we have spelling bees.

All of this is told in easy-to-read chapters that don't talk down to the reader, but also don't require a PhD. in linguistics to understand.