The fine art of English spelling

If you’ve ever puzzled over why “limb” and “debt” have a silent b, and what’s with the “i before e except after c” dictum when there are so many departures from the so-called rule, here’s the book for you.

“For every quirk of spelling, there’s a tale to be told,” writes Mark Peters. And, as he says in this review, David Crystal revels in telling those tales in Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling.