Judged rightly?

Shylock

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On Monday, I posted a query as to the correct spelling of the word "judg(e)ment, and I emailed the blogpost address to an old friend who had once corrected my spelling - I had spelled the word with an "e" between the "g" and the "m" - and my friend had taken out what she considered my superfluous "e." But she looked more deeply into my query this time and found the following:

Ok, I looked up the quote and learned it was Shylock praising Portia, thinking she was ruling in his favor in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In the First Folio, Shakespeare spelled it iudgement, and when I checked The New Testament 1526 translated by William Tyndale that word was also spelled iudgement. My King James Bible spells it judgment. Lastly, the Oxford English Dictionary preferred spelling is judgement and the variant is judgment, and the Merriam Webster reverses the preferred and variant spellings.

Thank you for allowing me to be the judge of how I am going to spell judgement from now on!

"This is more than I expected," I told her, and I added, "Thank you," explaining that "I now have a blogworthy topic for tomorrow." And so I have . . .