[BRLTTY] Possible contraction error: Guenever

[Lee Maschmeyer]

This one's weird!

According to the dictionary.com this should be spelled Guinevere. This 
spelling is contracted correctly.

But throughout Mark Twain's book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's 
Court" the spelling of Guenever is used. This same spelling is also used in 
the modernized-spelling edition of Malory's Le Morte Darthur available on 
Project Gutenberg and apparently edited by A. W. Pollard (whoever that may 
be).

What puzzles me is that when a word appears in a book, it is deemed to 
exist. This word has appeared in at least two books and yet is not in the 
dictionaries available at dictionary.com.

So, does it exist and hence should be contracted properly, or does it remain 
ephemeral and hence should be ignored? I think it exists, but the contrary 
decision can be justified.

In case anybody's interested, here are some examples of the Guenever 
spelling, all from Twain:

yield y unto ,que5 ,gu5ev}1 & put y
yield !m 6,que5 ,gu5ev}'s h&s z
,i _h be5 a ca2age4 ,que5 ,gu5ev} 0 z
,gu5ev} 0 b1uti;l1 x is true1 b take
(! k+ on "o side ( x & ,gu5ev}    #cba

-- 
Lee Maschmeyer
<lee_maschmeyer at wayne.edu>

"Be kind to your fur-bearing friends,
For a skunk may be somebody's brother."
     --Fred Allen