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.