News at Eleven: Sometimes, the loveliness of cellar door

is thought to be more evident when the phrase is given a different spelling. "I was astonished when someone first showed that by writing cellar door as Selladore," C. S. Lewis wrote in 1963, "one produces an enchanting proper name." Norman Mailer toyed with a respelling in his 1967 novel, "Why Are We in Vietnam?" "He is marooned, in case you have not noticed, on that balmy tropical isle pronounced Selador, spelled cellardoor, " Mailer writes of D. J., his 18-year-old protagonist. "Do you know a committee of Language Hump-type professors put out a committee finding back in 1936--most beautiful word in the English language is cellardoor."

from The New York Times: Cellar Door

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