Quoted Without Permission

'First name?'

'Otto,' [Tibbit] replied, then added by way of explanation: 'Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times would Scrabble champion. When he died we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score. He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren't.'

'Such as--?'

'Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhoea, that sort of thing. He also thought that "abbreviation" was too long for its meaning, that "monosyllabic" should have one syllable, "dyslexic" should be renamed "O" and "unspeakable" should be respelt "unsfzpxkable".'

from:

Fforde, J. (2005) The big over easy. Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.

More details at:

Jasper Fforde's Home Page

Look at the Nursery Crime division for the book, but the whole site is good...