Dear List,
 
I enjoy proofreading; it is a challenge like a game.  But I have come across a
wide variation in the spelling and usage of ordinary organ terminology.  (Stop
names are a different subject and not what I am talking about.)
 
A simple example: my spell checker does not recognize "windchest."  It
recommends "wind chest."  In the New Grove Organ book, the term is "wind-
chest," throughout.
 
Current standard English usage (as influenced by the personal computer age)
would suggest "wind chest" as the simple noun form, and "wind-chest" as the
adjective form.
 
Another term variously spelled and used (often in the same article or book) is
"organbuilder."  It seems there are "organ builders," and there are
"organbuilders" -- the first often meaning several builders of organs in
general, and the second (in the singular) referring to one person in
particular, or the profession itself.
 
Why do we do this sort of thing?  Is it the influence of other languages?  Is
it because of the esoteric nature of organ writing [or might that be
"organwriting"?]?  And if so, will the Internet influence a more standardized
usage?
 
This last suggestion hardly seems likely, given the awful state of spelling
and grammar and syntax which I read daily (with great pleasure [the content,
not the errors]) in the PIPORG-L digest!
 
We can't spell the possessive "its" correctly.  I have seen "their's."  So far
I have not seen "her's," but it is just a matter of time.  But I digress,
sorry.
 
Curiously, the really difficult organ world words are often rendered
perfectly, replete with various bastardized text methods of indicating any
needed diacriticals.
 
Frank Fitzgerald
 
P.S.  Thank you to people who explained "synoptic" organ stoplist [there's
another one] custom.
 
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