Re: Summarise

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

To points to make in response to Fobert Firth's authoritative sounding
statement.

First: summarize is not an invention of OED II, but is also the only acceptable
spelling given in the first edition (sorry, can't give the proper reference,
since I only have the annoying compact edition, where it appears on page 3150)
That's a fair amount of accumulated authority there, though as Robert points
out the spelling summarise appears in the quotations). Clearly the important
bottom line for Ada here though is that the spelling finalize should certainly
be regarded as acceptable British English, and you shouldn't let publishers
change it!

Second, anyone is free to play King Canute when it comes to language and
grammar, but to say that finalize is not an English word seems pushing it
to me. Yes it is a new word, appearing for the first time in OED II, but
with a fairly long history of use (the first quote is 1922, it appears to
origininate in Australia -- the Times first used it in 1955. The quotes
are mostly the z spelling with just a couple of examples of s spellings.
I guess brother Firth would have felt at home with N. Birkett who wrote
in 1953 (Magic of Words, a pleasant reference): "When I hear of...things
being adjumbreated, or visualized, or finalized..I think of the other aim
of this [English] Association, 'To uphold the standards of English writing
or speech'"

Still that was I am sorry to point out 42 years ago, and at this stage
attempting to maintain that finalize is not a word is as likely to succeed
as my campaign to preserve the meanings of moot and oxymoron :-)