Pet peeves: dropping an E

I'm currently reading By the Sea by Henry Gee (yes, that rhymes). It's a hugely entertaining novel that is something you'd expect if Dickens were alive today and decided to write a Gothic whodunit.

One of the minor points about the book that adds to my reading pleasure is that Henry spells acknowledgement and judgement with an "e" after the "g", the way they should be. This is one of my pet peeves...the e denotes that the g is a "soft" g and also avoids the ugliness of having three consonants in a row (dgm) were it dropped.

I grew up with the Queen's English, so perhaps this fixation of mine is not entirely surprising. I adjusted to American English well enough when I moved here many years ago (except for another pet peeve: the American pronunciation of "been". There are two Es there for a reason, people.). However, in the past couple of years, I've seen many British publishers dropping the essential E, even that last bastion of civilization, Nature Publishing Group. Clearly, the infection has spread across the pond.

What's next? Why stop at the noun--why not "acknowledg" or ”judg"? Thank you, Noah Webster.