A survey of English spelling

by Edward Carney

Published at a time when literacy and spelling are issues of topical concern, A Survey of English Spelling offers an authoritative, comprehensive and up-to-date account of this important but hitherto neglected area of the English language. The text brings together an extensive body of knowledge, both synthesized from diverse sources and original, unpublished research. The emphasis is on a functional exploration of the spelling regularities and markers that underpin literacy in English. There are four core sections: a critical survey of the methods and problems involved in describing the regularities of English spelling, including the influence of dialect and the classification of spelling errors; an analysis of speech-to-text correspondences, phoneme by phoneme; an analysis of text-to-speech correspondences as a set of rules; and a description of homographs and homophones, including affixes. Carney also gives a detailed account of the spelling conventions found in names and a descripti