Read an Academic Passage

[1]Before the middle of the fifteenth century, books in England were copied by hand, and English spelling varied widely. A single scribe might write the same word in two or three ways on one page, and spellings often reflected the local accent of the writer. Because few people read books from distant regions, this variety caused little difficulty.

[2]The arrival of the printing press changed the situation. When William Caxton set up the first press in England in 1476, he faced a practical question: which spellings should he use for books that would be sold across the country? Printers gradually favored the forms used in London, the center of government and trade. Since a printed book reached far more readers than a manuscript, these forms became familiar everywhere.

[3]Standardization was slow, however. Early printers sometimes added or removed letters simply to fit a line of text neatly, and spelling was not considered fixed until dictionaries such as Samuel Johnson's appeared in 1755. Meanwhile, pronunciation kept changing. As a result, many modern spellings record the way words sounded centuries ago, which is one reason English spelling seems so irregular today.