English words Dont (usually) End with u

English words Dont (usually) End with u English words Dont (usually) End with u English words Dont (usually) End with u By Maeve Maddox A reader asks, Is it proper to use thru as a replacement for through in professional writing? My knee-jerk reaction is, Good Heavens! Never! The spelling thru has an entry in the tolerant Merriam-Webster that jumps to through.The OED has no entry for thru, although the spelling is listed along with many other historical variations in the through entry. As a modern alternate spelling of through, thru has resisted the efforts of various reform organizations, newspapers, and people in high places to get it accepted by the general reading and writing public. When the American Philological Association issued a list of words needing reform in 1876, through was on it. Through was on the lists issued by the National Education Association in 1898, and the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906. Noah Webster, Teddy Roosevelt, and Mark Twain all used their bully pulpits to promote the spelling thru. The Chicago Tribune started using thru in 1934, but finally gave up in 1975 and went back to through. Thats not to say that thru wont creep into acceptance in another 50-100 years Certainly texters spell it that way to save time, as many sign painters do to save space. In other contexts, however, for awhile yet, the spelling thru screams non-standard. Why does this particular spelling reform resist acceptance when weve happily accepted such changes as theater for theatre, catalog for catalogue, and color for colour? I think there are two reasons. One, the word through is introduced to readers at such an early level of literacy that the mind and eye become habituated to it. Because it is among the 200 most commonly used words in English, the beginning reader gets plenty of practice in recognizing it. Two, thru doesnt look like an English word. This is one of Romalda Spaldings rules for silent final e in The Writing Road to Reading: English words dont end in u. The example she gives is blue. The e is not needed to change the sound of the preceding vowel. Theoretically, we could write blu, but the word looks unfinished, like thru. NOTE: Like every rule, Spaldings has its exceptions. We use several wordsmost of them borrowed from the Frenchthat end in -u: adieu, bureau, impromptu, etc., but they dont bother us because theyve remained sufficiently undigested as to strike us as having a foreign spelling. Native English words and fully-digested foreign borrowings look very strange when spelled with a u not followed by e. Consider: We are strolling down the avenu. She will argu about everything. The detective discovered a clu. I will continu until Ive finished. Give the actor his cu. Give the devil his du. Bottom line: The spelling thru just looks wrong. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Handy Expressions About HandsBody Parts as Tools of MeasurementHow to Treat Names of Groups and Organizations