Resign

The Problem

Two of my workers just started a new contract. To say thank you, they brought in some coffee and macaroons for their co-workers to enjoy. They sent a message to everyone that said, “We have just resigned. Please come and enjoy some snacks.” Another coworker was confused and thought they had quit.

I really think we need a new way to talk about contract renewals. Re-signing means to sign something again. You will hear this a lot in sports when a player decides to sign another contract with their current team. In this case, my coworkers signed a contract for another year. They re-signed their contracts here.

However, resign means to leave your job voluntarily. This is the opposite of re-sign. To differentiate the two words, we use a hyphen when writing and we pronounce the words a little differently when speaking. Re-sign is softer (rēˈsīn). Resign has a harder S sound. It comes across as a Z sound (rəˈzīn).

My Solution

When we write re-sign, we often omit the hyphen making things very confusing. My solution would be to change the spelling of resign to rezine. When Noah Webster standardized American spelling rules, he changed a lot of British spelling to better reflect how the word was pronounced. It is not as easy to make changes to spelling nowadays, but if enough people start spelling it as rezine, it will end up in the dictionary.

Thoughts?

What do you think about rezine. Can you think of any other words that get confused? How would you change their spelling?