Finally, a mention should be made of the orthography and pronunciation of heraldic terms. According to one of the foremost experts on heraldry and himself a herald, J. P. Brooke-Little, “The spelling of heraldic terms has always been capricious and it is true to say that even today different armorists will favour, nay almost fight and die for, certain spellings.”

The current tendency, however, seems to be for anglicization of French words. Thus, semée (“strewn or powered with small charges”) is invariably spelled semy; dancettée (the term refers to a form of line) becomes dancetty; and chequée (a field covered with small squares of alternate tinctures like a chessboard), checky. This helps to avoid the problem of deciding whether the word should always be masculine or feminine or agree with the noun it qualifies (in which case, should the noun be given its French gender?). However, it is usually deemed necessary to keep the traditional form with words forming part of French phrases and those with no English equivalent, e. g., semé-de-lis, goutté, etc.  

Anglicizations is even more evident in the pronunciation of heraldic terms. French-derived words are invariably pronounced as if they were English. Thus vert is not “vaire” but is pronounced as written, as are all words ending in –ant, like rampant, passant, volant, etc. Many terms can properly be pronounced in more than one way. Thus gules can be “jules” or the “g” can be hard. The latter is the more usual pronunciation but the former is not incorrect.