Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

palus means a

stake,

if the first syllable is long, a

marsh,

if it be short; again when the same letter is short in the nominative and long in the ablative, we generally require the circumflex to make it clear which quantity to understand.

Similarly it has been held that we should observe distinctions such as the following: if the preposition ex is compounded with specto, there will be an s in the second syllable, while there will be no s if it is compounded with pecto.

Again the following distinction has frequently been observed: ad is spelt with a d when it is a preposition, but with a t when it is a conjunction, while cum is spelt quum when it denotes time, but cum when it denotes accompaniment.

Still more pedantic are the practices of making the fourth letter of quidquid a c to avoid the appearance of repeating a question, and of writing

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quotidie instead of colidie to show that it stands for quot diebus. But such practices have disappeared into the limbo of absurdities.

It is often debated whether in our spelling of prepositions we should be guided by their sound when compounded, or separate. For instance when I say optinuit, logic demands that the second letter should be a b, while to the ear the sound is rather that of p: or again take the case of immunis:

the letter n, which is required by strict adherence to fact, is forced by the sound of the m. which follows to change into another m.