Oldfart,

The implication that correct spelling is an affectation is preposterous nonsense. The purpose of language is to communicate, and the written word communicates best when both the author and the gentle reader share a common vocabulary.

As the text in question is a web site, published in the twenty-first century, it would seem to qualify as being "relatively modern". It is also not poetry (even modern), and so one has little intellectual basis of extending the notion of poetic license to cover oddities.

In addition, capitalization on the page is inconsistent; does that fall under the same whimsical preference notion that covers incorrect spelling?

I note with amusement that you misspelled standardization, or was that done intentionally merely to prove your point? Additionally, may I inquire to what "rush" you are referring? Inexpensive books have been generally available for a couple of hundred years now.

As you use Geoffrey Chaucer as an example of an author who "would have laughed at the idea of rigid spelling", and as I happen to have the "Troilus and Criseyde" and "Caunterbury Tales" in the Middle English, perhaps you and I could review off-line exactly where that author makes light of his spelling. Both of these works are poems, and terribly old, so I am certain that you’ll be able to bring my slavish modern notions to a greater sensitivity of the written word.

I look forward to your prompt PM.

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Eudaimonia