Bad Judgement
written by John Bolch
on Thursday, May 22, 2008
I remember many years ago when I was an articled clerk being chastised for misspelling the word 'judgment/judgement', when referring to the decision of a court. I don't recall which way I spelt it, but remember afterwards looking it up in a dictionary, which confirmed that either spelling could be used. Since then, I have merrily alternated the spelling, as the whim took me. Until recently, that is, when I came across the 'Judgments' page on the Judiciary of England and Wales website, where they state:
"you may think we can't spell, but when we refer to a court judgment we have deliberately missed an “e” out. It is not entirely clear why, it's just the way it is spelt!"
Right, that explains it then.
May 22, 2008 5:17 PM
John
I tend to use my judgement when using judgment to refer to a decision of a court and when I give a judgment on whether I should have another glass of rioja to impair my judgement that is a matter of using one's judgement to draft the judgment.
I think this is clear ?
May 22, 2008 5:48 PM
Crystal, as in the glass holding your rioja.
May 23, 2008 11:06 AM
Fantastic. It's just the way it is.
We don't know why, or can't be bothered to find out? I guess it is no different than using the word jail/gaol ;-/
May 23, 2008 1:11 PM
While both spellings are acceptable, the big dictionary (which you can get at online with your library card number - nifty, eh?) prefers with an e.
May 23, 2008 1:14 PM
Do you want to argue with the entire judiciary? ;-)
May 23, 2008 7:14 PM
And how do you refer to the Acknowledgment of Service form then?
By the way curiously my dictionary allows both spellings of judgment (and I'm a non-e person, but I blame my English teacher for that)but gives an additional definition for judgment as "the estimate by God of the ultimate wothiness or unworthiness of the individual or all mankind - as in Judgment Day which it also defines.
Perhaps to keep the law secular, we should all be using judgement!
May 23, 2008 10:51 PM
Acknowledg... oh, whatever...
Hmm... yes, in view of what you say perhaps I prefer 'judgement' after all...
May 24, 2008 4:50 PM
I confess I too had been an optional 'e' man: but the idiomatic distinction is frequent and I tend to adopt it to avoid the supercilious and incorrect language Nazis. Spineless or what?
Fowler's Modern English says both are acceptable with the US preferring the 'e'-less version. It says:
..."The presence or absence of -e- is not a matter of correctness or the reverse, but just one of convention in various publishing houses."
May 24, 2008 7:10 PM
Yep, spineless. Just like me. ;-)
May 26, 2008 1:14 PM
I thought one wrote judgment in Cambridge but we in Oxford write judgement
May 26, 2008 2:32 PM
Ah, that explains it - Lord Phillips was educated at Cambridge!
May 27, 2008 3:55 PM
In my traineeship I was told that all lawyers, and only lawyers, spelt that word "judgment", and the spelling was a way of telling if someone was PLU.
May 27, 2008 4:06 PM
Interesting, although it seems that that is not always an accurate test...
May 28, 2008 2:01 PM
I've just written a 400-page book on family law (the Fathers 4 Justice Handbook) using the e-less spelling and now learn from Richard Ramsay that as an Oxford man I must put the e back in (which I confess was my instinct).
I really shouldn't have trusted the Microsoft Word spell-checker.
Damnation.
May 28, 2008 2:05 PM
Never trust Micro$oft! :-)