I'm currently reading a fun book called The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary . One part struck me as weird, though. It describes how the editor of the dictionary received the madman's work (he was one of the principal volunteers in creating the dictionary) in his "distinctively American handwriting." My question is, how can handwriting be "distinctively American?"

We spell "humor" and "aluminum" correctly. Those in England, not realizing that we are spelling the words correctly, think that the difference is due to our handwriting. to Karrow

Handwriting is thought of as distinctively and uniquely individual but in reality it is only an individual's version of what he or she was taught at school. So it follows that a whole generation of schoolchildren taught to write in a county school in, say, Cambridgeshire all write in a similar way. More than that they write similarly to all other children taught in that county's schools in their era. Where there is a national standard then a whole nation writes the same way. So all French handwriting of people of the same age is nationally distinctive. There will be a similar widespread effect when a particular textbook for handwriting is popular over a whole region or country.
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Ignorance of this fact could be dangerous to liberty : I once had a case where the prosecution relied upon the peculiarly distinctive writing of the accused to show that he was the probable author of a document. Happily this theory was discredited when one of the assisting counsel present showed his own written notes which were being made as the trial proceeded. The handwriting of his notes were identically " peculiar". The explanation was that both the accused and counsel had been raised and taught on the same island in the West Indies so whilst the writing seemed almost uniquely odd to the prosecution witness it was in truth commonplace in at least one place at one time.

So it may well be that there was a style of handwriting peculiar to some or all of the United States.

P.S. As to humour and aluminium neither country is correct on the first. In classical Latin the root word is umor , sometimes incorrectly rendered by the less literate Latin speakers as humor an abuse which had perhaps become common by the C14 when people wrote of the 'humours'of the body. They did of course correctly write this as 'humours', being wisely influenced by the French; it is not our fault that Noah Webster thought he knew better . The word umor is Latin for moisture, by the way.

As to aluminium it rather depends on whether we see this as some strange Latin noun or as a Latin adjective or adjectival noun. If the former then it is 'aluminum' if the latter then it is 'aluminium'. What did the first person to name it have it as?

According to the E.B., Fred, aluminium, or aluminum to the less fortunate members of the site, was originally called "alumium" basically because most metals already found ended in "ium".
Humphrey Davy changed the name to "aluminum", but most civlised countries call it "aluminium" which is a combination of both names.

Fred, so, what do you do about a poor mongrel such as myself that went to a dozen different schools in 4 different states as I grew up? I guarantee the back woods of Maine had an education VERY different from Southern Pennsylvania in Amish Country.

quote:

Originally posted by Fourbrick2:
According to the E.B., Fred, aluminium, or aluminum to the less fortunate members of the site, was originally called "alumium" basically because most metals already found ended in "ium".
Humphrey Davy changed the name to "aluminum", but most civlised countries call it "aluminium" which is a combination of both names.

Snap! It turns out that in 1807 Davy proposed it be called alumium. Then he decided to call it 'aluminum'. However the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry decided that it should be 'aluminium' in line with most other '-um ' elements. (If you search the IUPAC website you'll seek in vain for 'aluminum' as it lists only 'aluminium' ). The name was aluminium in the USA too until 1925 when some body there decided to revert to calling it 'aluminum'.

Now , far be it from us to criticise, but IUPAC, founded in 1919 as an international body largely for the purpose of standardising, sets the nomenclature of all chemicals to this day. We may suppose that the USA likes to be quaintly out of date, just as it is with metrication ("Dad, what's a gallon ?" )

PS The daughter recently asked her mother " What's a lub?". It turned out that she was reading an old recipe book. Her 'lub' was lb, a pound .

PPS Sherasi. I don't know, but you sure as hell better not write any incriminating documents (see above). Your handwriting is certain to be unique, after all those influences on it !