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RSSJudgement or Judgment?
Reader John Moss wonders about the spellings judgement and judgment. His Word application flags judgement as an incorrect spelling, but when he searches the word online,
both judgement and judgment occur with seeming equal frequency. Is one English and the other American? What a bother! If both are OK, I guess I could update my dictionary by adding the ‘judgement’ spelling – but doing so might lend assistance to spelling inconsistencies. You’re probably going to tell me this is a ‘judgment call’, but I’m still wondering why the two spellings.
Yes, I’d have to say that judgement is British spelling and judgment American, but in the early twentieth century when H. W. Fowler was writing his influential book on usage, the spelling judgment was evidently being used by a lot of British writers. According to Fowler “modern usage” favored judgment.
Nevertheless, Fowler and the OED preferred judgement:
judgement is the form sanctioned in the Revised Version of the Bible, & the OED prefers the older & more reasonable spelling. Judgement is therefore here recommended… –Fowler p. 310.
Wanting to see how Shakespeare spelled it, I looked up that line in The Merchant of Venice in which Shylock praises Portia, thinking she is ruling in his favor. I found it online at the Literature Network:
A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!
Not wanting to rely solely on an online source, I also looked it up in the First Folio:
A Daniel come to iudgement, yea, a Daniel.
Yes, that’s a letter i.
The OED still prefers judgement, but acknowledges judgment as a variant spelling.
That venerable pronouncing dictionary by Daniel Jones covers both bases by printing the entry word as judg(e)ment.
Merriam-Webster prefers judgment and lists judgement as a variant.
The words abridgement/abridgment and acknowledgement/acknowledgment follow the same British/American dichotomy as judgement/judgment.
Fowler offers a rule and an exception to the rule for dealing with words ending with a Mute e:
RULE: When a suffix is added to a word ending in mute e, the mute e is dropped before a vowel, but not before a consonant.
EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: The e is kept even before a vowel if it is needed to preserve or emphasize the soft sound of a preceding g or c.
I suppose it’s because I’m an American, but I can’t see any reason to keep the e before a consonant if it’s not needed to soften the g.
Still, these are useful guidelines for spelling the many words that end in silent/mute e.
For example, reader Suresh was wondering about adding a suffix to the word cache:
I would like to know whether, I can use the term: “cacheing.” Example: Google is cacheing my website/page.
The word cache follows the rule and drops the e to give caching.
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Funny, to look at the word “caching,” it seems as if it might be pronounced like “catching,” or even “ka-CHING!”
I always preferred to keep the “e” in “judgement,” because seeing all those consonants in a row in the middle there (”dgm”) was kind of overwhelming to me…I think I just needed the “e” in there for a break…but my spellchecker kept hounding me, so I switched to “judgment.” I don’t like it.
I am also kind of a stickler about “bingeing,” “impingeing” and “cringeing,” but my spellchecker snags me and prefers to drop the “e”; it prefers “impinging,” (I do a lot of medical transcription and that’s a fairly common word in Orthopedics and Neurosurgery). According to your rule, it would seem that those “e”s need to be in there (not dropped before a vowel), so I’m sticking with doing it my way. And maybe I’ll go back to putting the “e” in judgement!
Sherry,
I agree that judgement looks better with the e. I just don’t agree with Fowler that it’s more “reasonable” than judgment.
As for dropping the e from bingeing and cringeing, the speller checker is definitely wrong. Dropping the e in those words calls forth a hard g pronunciation.
I think that in context the spelling caching works.
“Judgment” is more prone to mispronunciation: the d-g-m may be sounded as “duggum,” “dugm,” “gum” or simply “dum,” depending on the reader. To ensure the d-g are combined together and sounded “j,” we required a separater in the form of an “e.” Therefore: “judgement.”
About “bingeing,” “impingeing,” droping the e won’t convert the soft g into hard. From what I understand, g remains soft when followed by both e as well as i. It only turns into a hard g in cases of a, o or u.
I find that judgment (without ‘e’) is the preferred spelling in the admittedly somewhat conservative context of the law. Indeed, I was once instructed to differentiate between general good judgement and judgment as given by the court, where appropriate.
To #3 (pulkit): A “g” in front of an “i” does not automatically make it a soft “g.” Namely: Give, gift, girl, giddy, gig, giggle, gimp, girdle…; pinging (as in a URL). What about singing vs singeing? Dropping the “e” in this case, specifically, will definitely change the soft “g” to a hard “g” and of course change the word completely. I believe the “e” has a definite place and should not be dropped, spellchecker be damned!
I haven’t seen many uses of judgment at all. Probably because I’m in the UK and judgement seems to be the much more accepted form in general here.
I once knew a chap called Hodgson, a grotesque, bow legged fellow, a tail end charlie on Lancasters during the war. I had trouble with his name for ages, wondering if it was pronounced Hodson or Hogson. As he was a rotten swine I settled for the latter.
Actually, in the Philippines, the reason judgment is preferred over judgement is that teachers teach that judgement is wrong. Even my browser auto-spellchecker says it’s wrong.