Your site has been one of my favorite finds of this decade. Thank you for the fantastic work.
There are always going to be some changes in grammar...
Consider this edit:
https://github.com/standardebooks/h-p-lovecraft_short-fictio...
This is a character who would know that "'phone" is short for "telephone", but it's changed so that he says "phone". It ruins the effect of telephones being new and modern technology, and makes them so commonplace that people are no longer consciously aware that the word "phone" is an abbreviation. (Although it actually does need an edit, because the automatic conversion of the ' failed and turned it into a ‘ instead of the correct ’.)
For example, the original spelling of Shakespeare in 1609 looks something like this:
From off a hill whoſe concaue wombe reworded,
A plaintfull ſtory from a ſiſtring vale
My ſpirrits t'attend this doble voyce accorded...
Vpon her head a plattid hiue of ſtraw...[1]
As early as 1700 people have been modernizing (for example) Shakespeare, going so far as to add apostrophes that weren't there (I remember one guy in a discussion with me on this topic lamented that modern editions removed apostrophes, when in fact they were added by editors in times past...).
Our small, entirely one-for-one spelling edits are in the same spirit. For your example, I don't think removing the apostrophe from "phone" changes the meaning of the text at all. It does remove the explicit announcement to the reader of "phone" as a contraction (though a clever reader will notice that the word "phone" occurs in the word "telephone" in this same story); but does it change the story's meaning? Or, is it more like replacing the long "ſ" in the quote above with a modern "s"? After all, removing "ſ" removes the history of our written language as a descendant of Roman cursive script, which, like the history of "phone" being a contraction, is something that someone somewhere probably would prefer to preserve!
The only difference between SE and the editors of old is that we're being upfront about it, and we give readers a chance to undo those changes using Git, if they prefer. And, ultimately, our editions don't prevent anyone from reading older editions with their preferred spelling variant preserved. Old books with old spelling and 100% faithful digital transcriptions are out there for everyone to still enjoy. We're just another option for readers who want to enjoy a timeless book without having to fight through dated spelling. :)
[1] http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/UC...
I do think removing the apostrophe from "'phone" changes the meaning, because it implies a different relationship to the technology. It's like writing "internet" without the capital I. This is still considered incorrect, but it's becoming more common, and I think eventually it will replace "Internet". The loss of the capital letter, just like the loss of the apostrophe, shows the technology fading into the background and losing its novelty.
And the works of Shakespeare are an extreme example, being older than most works on the site. I'd prefer the original spelling, but for works of that age I can understand changing it. I'd set the publication of Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) (or a few years later) as the cut-off point for spelling changes.
I think, rather, in text a character's relationship with technology is part of the text, not of the spelling. A character does not know how he spelled "phone" when they're speaking dialog. The sounds out of his mouth do not include an apostrophe whether it's there in the spelling or not.
And, I think there are plenty of people who would be just as upset at using Johnson's dictionary as a cutoff for spelling. If we demand original spelling in everything we read, why is any cutoff acceptable? (Or so they would argue.) Of course, I disagree that a we need a cutoff at all, or that spelling matters in the general sense :)
(Of course, spelling can matter when the text makes a point to be old-timey; so if you note in the H.P. Lovecraft short fiction example, the "A Reminiscence of Samuel Johnson" short story retains its archaic spelling and style, because Lovecraft wrote it archaically on purpose. In fact we retain several archaic spelling styles in Lovecraft that we might otherwise modernize, because he was famous for thinking of himself as an "aged antiquarian" and wanted his prose to reflect that. This is where a careful and well-read editor matters, and those are the kinds of people we have volunteering at SE.)
Ultimately it comes down to taste, and the trust you have in the editor of the volume you're reading. This project is unintentionally making it a mission of mine to reveal to readers how much of what they've read in the past and think is "genuine," has in fact been heavily edited by many people on its journey from first printing a hundred years ago to your hands today, no different than what we're doing. SE just says so up front and gives you the option to undo.
I proposed Johnson's Dictionary because it's the first English dictionary that was widely accepted as authoritative. Before then you could argue that there was no real standard spelling, and all that mattered was whether writers could be understood. After it was published, idiosyncratic spelling gained meaning.
>In fact we retain several archaic spelling styles in Lovecraft that we might otherwise modernize, because he was famous for thinking of himself as an "aged antiquarian" and wanted his prose to reflect that.
I checked Lovecraft first for that reason, and I was relieved to find the changes were much less than I feared.