A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712) [ Concepts ]
… to Rome , and till they were over-run by the barbarous nations upon the fall of that Empire. The Chinese have books in their language above two thousand years old, neither have the frequent conquests of the Tartars been able to … at length sounded faint and languid. This was a pretence to take up the same custom in prose; so that most of the books we see now-a-days, are full of those manglings and abbreviations. Instances of this abuse are innumerable: what … orthography. Yet many people are so fond of this conceit, that it is sometimes a difficult matter to read modern books and pamphlets; where the words are so curtailed, and varied from their original spelling, that whoever hath been …
Corruption | Eloquence
Anthology