On 7/3/2019 8:50 AM, Jason Cobb wrote:
Again, as a matter of style, should we prefer "Judgement" or
"Judgment"? My > spellchecker complains about the first one, and it
appears that "Judgment"
is more accepted as correct. The Rules use both, although they only
use "Judgment" (no e) twice, that being in Rule 2479 ("Official
Justice"), but that rule then immediately proceeds to use
"Judgement" (with e) twice.
I don't really care which one is picked, I'd rather just have
consistency.
Looking back at the CotC archives, "judgement" is used in case files
back to
CFJ 1 in 1993 (i.e. in the "official" CotC case publications). I did
a few
spot checks in different years and couldn't find "judgment" used.
However, in the original ruleset itself, AFAICT, both were used. It was
"judgment" in this context (http://www.fysh.org/~zefram/agora
/rules_text.txt):
> RULE 113
> A Player always has the option to forfeit the Game rather than
> continue to play or incur a Game penalty. No penalty worse than
> losing, in the judgment of the Player to incur it, may be
> imposed.
But it was "judgement" in this context:
> RULE 216
> A legal Judgement is either TRUE, FALSE, or UNDECIDED. The
> Judgement may be accompanied by reasons and arguments, but such
> reasons and arguments form no part of the Judgement itself.
I don't know if there was any purposeful distinction intended between
the two spellings in the initial ruleset.
The history of the "judgement" rule (R216 then later R591) shows it was
always "Judgement" in the CFJ definition context except for when it was
"judicial case" instead. The main CFJ definition was consistent,
although
sometimes "judgment" appeared in supporting clauses, here it is in
the same
paragraph as "judgement" in R591/12:
> A Judge judges a CFJ by sending eir Judgment to the Clerk of the
> Courts. The Judgement of a CFJ must be either TRUE or FALSE.
but that was unique to a short time period, both R591/10 and R591/14
use "judgement" solely.
I remember being corrected "judgement" by someone when I was new here
in 2001 so that's kinda what I trained myself to use.
So overall, I think "judgement" is most consistent historically.
I don't have a preference in terms of general taste, except to say
that I'm
going to keep it "judgement" in the CFJ archives, for historical
consistency
(i.e. for smooth auto-parsing).
MW-online has this to say:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/judgment
> Judgment can also be spelled "judgement," and usage experts have long
> disagreed over which spelling is the preferred one. Henry Fowler
asserted,
> "The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] prefers the older and more
reasonable
> spelling. 'Judgement' is therefore here recommended." William
Safire held
> an opposite opinion, writing, "My judgment is that Fowler is not to be
> followed." "Judgement" is in fact the older spelling, but it
dropped from
> favor and for centuries "judgment" was the only spelling to appear in
> dictionaries. That changed when the OED (Fowler's source) was
published
> showing "judgement" as an equal variant. Today, "judgment" is more
popular
> in the U.S., whereas both spellings make a good showing in Britain.
So I think we can pick either as Agoran dialect and be "archaic but not
incorrect", spellcheckers notwithstanding. FWIW, the Thunderbird
spellchecker doesn't flag either one as incorrect.
-G.
