Right Writing or Rite Riting?

• Publication year: 1997
• Pages: 61

26 Colo.Law. 61 Colorado Lawyer 1997.

1997, November, Pg. 61. Right Writing or Rite Riting?

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61

Vol.26, No. 11, Pg. 61

The Colorado Lawyer
November 1997
Vol. 26, No. 11 [Page 61]

Departments
The Scrivener: Modern Legal Writing
Right Writing or Rite Riting?
by K. K. DuVivier
C 1998 K.K. DuVivier

How often have you fretted over a spelling, punctuation, or grammar rule? Is the word spelled "O.K.," "OK," or "Okay"? Is it "disc" or "disk"? Do we use an apostrophe for "1990's," or is it "1990s"? Do we put punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks

You hate to waste time, and money, over such petty questions but you also do not want to appear uneducated. To complicate the issue, many of the respected sources--the U.S. Government Printing Office, the Associated Press, and the New York Times--list conflicting rules. Our dream might be of one uniform source for the correct form

German writers now can live that dream. After more than two decades of deliberation, a government-sponsored commission, composed of linguists from the major German-speaking countries, recently issued a new standard German grammar called Die neue deutsche Rechtschreibung.

German writers should have embraced the Rechtschreibung. Although it contains over 600,000 entries addressing the rules of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, its goal is to simplify and standardize the German language. One hundred spelling rules were cut from the official list (212, reduced to 112), and the rules governing commas were cut from fifty-two to nine.

Instead of praise, however, Rechtschreibung is receiving resistance and ridicule. It was to be phased in over a seven-year period, but already Rechtschreibung has been boycotted by major newspapers and magazines, including the prestigious Der Spiegel. Even German President Roman Herzog has rejected it, saying, "In the future, I'll do what I've done up till now: speak as I wish."1

President Herzog's remark highlights an age-old debate. Should dictionaries and style manuals record popular usage or dictate it? Advocates of rule books have had an impact; schools dictate standardized grammar and spelling. Some of the debate about teaching children to read through a "whole-language" (or context) approach is that spelling and grammar skills are weakened.

Yet, few can debate that language is a living and evolving creature that cannot be...