Passage:

A historian of language challenges the popular picture in which one dialect abruptly replaces another, as though speakers collectively wake up and decide to talk differently. In the archives, the historian finds a slower mechanism: small, almost clerical decisions about spelling in school primers and local newspapers gradually make some forms look “standard” and others look “provincial.” Once a few printers, teachers, and clerks converge on one convention, later writers imitate it for the pragmatic reason that imitation reduces the risk of being judged careless. The historian emphasizes that the underlying speech does not instantly transform; rather, a visible written norm forms first, and only later does that norm feed back into pronunciation through education and social aspiration. Thus what later generations remember as a sudden linguistic break often begins as a series of low-stakes choices that quietly shift which forms are rewarded.

Which choice best states the central idea of the passage?