through vs thru
- Thread starter Orleander
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
"Thru" is in Dictionary.com, the definitive source for American usage. It's regarded as "informal" and "simplified," and as JR says it is therefore inappropriate for any formal writing. Nonetheless you'll see it everywhere that saving space or looking cool is a priority, such as advertising, webspeak, and the headlines of supermarket tabloids.
I question the "simplified" part. Yes it contains fewer letters, but does that make it easier for someone learning English to spell or read? I don't believe there are any other one-syllable words, or polysyllables with the accent on the last syllable, that end in the cardinal U vowel, in which the sound is spelled U. It's spelled in myriad ways, including OUGH, OO, UE and EW, but never U.
A possible exception is tabu, which is in the dictionary, but everyone except anthropologists spells it taboo. Even an unaccented syllable... all I can think of is ecru, which is a French word that only women know because men can only identify ten colors.
I don't think "thru" is a helpful neologism if we're not going to finish the job and respell the other OUGH words.
"Donut," on the other hand, is not considered an incorrect spelling, but "doughnut" is the preferred variant. It's an American word, coined about 200 years ago, so I guess we get to decide how it's spelled. It really is just what it looks like, a combination of "dough" and "nut," but I can't find an explanation for the coinage since there are no nuts in the batter and it doesn't look or taste like a nut. You probably see the word spelled out more often on neon signs than in any other medium, so it makes sense that they would go for the shorter version. If you're hungry for a donut you want to see that roadsign from as far away as possible, so reducing the number of letters almost by half and making them all larger makes it easier to spot.
The word "flu" has been around almost as long as "doughnut." "Influenza" is not only a mouthful, but it conforms to Spanish and Italian phonetic patterns rather than English, so it doesn't trip off the tongue lightly. (It's simply the word "influence" in those languages and don't ask me about the reasoning behind that.) When you start talking about the Spanish influenza or the swine influenza or the avian influenza, it's easy to see why you'd quickly lop off three syllables--even in writing! In fact, the secondary definition of "flu" is a specific strain of the virus such as bird flu instead of avian influenza.
All of these shortenings are doubtless influenced by newspaper typesetting. Every column-inch of reporting they can cut by eliminating "unnecessary" letters makes room to sell one more column-inch of advertising. In the 1930s the Chicago Tribune launched a campaign to "simplify" spelling. It was the Great Depression and saving pennies was important. They championed spellings like "nite." (Forgive me if I don't have the details 100% right but it was a Chicago newspaper at approximately that time.)
Edit: It just dawned on me that "nut" has more than one meaning. A doughnut is in the shape of a torus, just like the threaded type of nut that you screw onto a bolt. Maybe that's where it came from. I don't think "doughring" or "doughcircle" or (goddess forbid) "doughtorus" would have caught on.
I question the "simplified" part. Yes it contains fewer letters, but does that make it easier for someone learning English to spell or read? I don't believe there are any other one-syllable words, or polysyllables with the accent on the last syllable, that end in the cardinal U vowel, in which the sound is spelled U. It's spelled in myriad ways, including OUGH, OO, UE and EW, but never U.
A possible exception is tabu, which is in the dictionary, but everyone except anthropologists spells it taboo. Even an unaccented syllable... all I can think of is ecru, which is a French word that only women know because men can only identify ten colors.
I don't think "thru" is a helpful neologism if we're not going to finish the job and respell the other OUGH words."Donut," on the other hand, is not considered an incorrect spelling, but "doughnut" is the preferred variant. It's an American word, coined about 200 years ago, so I guess we get to decide how it's spelled. It really is just what it looks like, a combination of "dough" and "nut," but I can't find an explanation for the coinage since there are no nuts in the batter and it doesn't look or taste like a nut. You probably see the word spelled out more often on neon signs than in any other medium, so it makes sense that they would go for the shorter version. If you're hungry for a donut you want to see that roadsign from as far away as possible, so reducing the number of letters almost by half and making them all larger makes it easier to spot.
The word "flu" has been around almost as long as "doughnut." "Influenza" is not only a mouthful, but it conforms to Spanish and Italian phonetic patterns rather than English, so it doesn't trip off the tongue lightly. (It's simply the word "influence" in those languages and don't ask me about the reasoning behind that.) When you start talking about the Spanish influenza or the swine influenza or the avian influenza, it's easy to see why you'd quickly lop off three syllables--even in writing! In fact, the secondary definition of "flu" is a specific strain of the virus such as bird flu instead of avian influenza.
All of these shortenings are doubtless influenced by newspaper typesetting. Every column-inch of reporting they can cut by eliminating "unnecessary" letters makes room to sell one more column-inch of advertising. In the 1930s the Chicago Tribune launched a campaign to "simplify" spelling. It was the Great Depression and saving pennies was important. They championed spellings like "nite." (Forgive me if I don't have the details 100% right but it was a Chicago newspaper at approximately that time.)
Edit: It just dawned on me that "nut" has more than one meaning. A doughnut is in the shape of a torus, just like the threaded type of nut that you screw onto a bolt. Maybe that's where it came from. I don't think "doughring" or "doughcircle" or (goddess forbid) "doughtorus" would have caught on.
You say "corruption", I say improvement. Why write through when you could write thru? Shortening words has been an American pastime since (at least) the revolution. You say colour, we way color. We say edema, you say oedema.
who started contractions? Did they start out as unacceptable, but are now ok?
Haven't people always been shortening words?
"z" is an American corruption of the good British letter "s", which is of course much more popular in general writing.
And what's more, the correct pronunciation is "zed", not "zee"!
I am definitely not lazy & I detest laziness with language & communication.
Thru simply makes more sense than through. When most people get that thru their heads, we will have made some progress.
If I recall an executive order was given sometime back to change the American variation of English to strictly phonetic spellings. phonetic to be legally spelled "fonetik', something that obviously failed despite sporadic successes that still exist today. I believe it failed when the Supreme Court refused to change their documentation.
The term influenza came from the belief that it was due to influence from the gods or spirits or whatever.
Ragu. Tutu (the outfit]. Guru. A bunch of names (Malibu, Xanadu).fraggle said:
That's a point in favor of changing the spelling of through, slough, and the other three affected words whatever they are. It would not collide with existing meanings and uses of the spelling, confuse homonyms, muddle dialects, etc., as so many of these ill-considered "improvements" through phonetics do.
In general, though, having different spellings of homonyms and the like comes in handy, in print where clues to meaning are fewer and more cryptic.
We could end up with "thru" for physical motion and the sense of path or direction, "through" for "by effort or agency of". That would be OK, eh?
It would be interesting to see which spelling Carroll would have chosen for "Through the Looking Glass".
No, that wouldn't be OK. IF the 1 word isn't enough, we have via.
We need to rid the language of homonyms.
We need to rid the language of homonyms.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
It's very common. Contractions exist in German (vom), Spanish (del), Italian (nel), Portuguese (das), French (des) and even Chinese (her).
As Oli pointed out, "-ize" is not an Americanism.
thats only in the beijing dialect though. xiar, diar, huar, huir, those are words that only beijingers use. and they are totally unnecessary. i never use em. taiwanese dialect = da best!
Correct. I regard deviations as colorful, neat things. I hate that people insist they're a sign of ignorance if they've only recently come into mainstream lexicon.