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Welcome, milum!
I disagree. The 'e' in ageing serves to mark it immediately as the correct prounciation based on recognition of the root word 'age'. There is otherwise more chance of the eye starting to interpret this group as analogous to words like 'again', a problem less likely with your other examples.
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Excellent maiden post, milum. Stick around, you'll love it here.
As far as I'm conecerned all thaet extera e in ageing does is make it look funney and, to quote the language maven* of the NYTimes (of whom I disagree with him a lot, but not on this matter), "If it looks funny, the hell with it."
*Ænigma says, of maven, [maverick].
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Well, you can't base spellings purely on whether they look right, but to me, "ageing" does look funny, though I can understand how it might add clarity. If you look at it wrong, it almost looks like you are trying to pronounce it with an "ei" vowel - a-g-ei-n-g - perhaps sounding like "agehng" or "agayng" (hard g)?  Here's one I'd like to know. When someone loses life, they are dying. When someone changes their hair color they are...dyeing?
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Francais, I learned it as dieing when someone losses life (also used when a comedian is extremely bad and nobody laughs)
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Might as well through this one onto the discussion while we're at it! If I pretended to have a clue here it would be dishonest... And I cannot tell a lye...because, then, I'd wind up with soap in my mouth!
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In reply to:
Well, you can't base spellings purely on whether they look right ...
I don't see that how a word looks has anything to do with spelling. Otherwise you might well have to accept "ghoti" as an acceptable spelling of "fish".
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you can't base spellings purely on whether they look right
You could back in the good old days when people generally spelled things right. Learning the body of English words by rote is nigh unto impossible but if you're used to seeing them spelled right then if they're spelled wrong they look funny. Sometimes I'll try a few versions until I get one that doesn't look funny. Some have been so badly abused lately that it's hard to tell sometimes. I've gotten so that its and it's both look wrong in all contexts.
Well, maybe not purely.
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RE: You could back in the good old days when people generally spelled things right.
can you give me a day? or date? or year? or decade? just when was it? and were things spelled right in all variants of english? or just one? you would so honor (or is honour?) me if you could.
the good out days are always mythical.. only the very old believe in them.. i didn't think you to be old faldage.. or are you just playing the fool?
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