Editor's Corner

I was reading about the new Hobbit movie this morning, and this article on the spelling of dwarfs (versus dwarves) landed serendipitously in my mailbox. Fascinating!

From The Grammarist:

Dwarfs is the standard plural of the noun dwarf. This has been so for centuries. Dwarves is a variant popularized (though not invented) by English author J.R.R. Tolkien in his fantasy fiction works, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien spelling is appropriate when referring to little people in fantasy worlds. Dwarfs is better everywhere else.

Dwarf also works as a verb meaning to cause to appear small in size. In this sense, dwarf is inflected dwarfs, not dwarves,in the singular present tense.

There is controversy over whether dwarf is ever an appropriate term for real-life people, but we won’t go into the nomenclature issues here.

For examples, see http://grammarist.com/usage/dwarfs-dwarves/.

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