#  Aphorisms on Early Printed Books 

 



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*u* and *v* can represent either a vowel or a consonant, so *vnto* = “unto”, and *haue* = “have”. *v* is usually at the beginning of words and *u* elsewhere.

Spelling was not standardized before the popularization of dictionaries in the eighteenth century, but a word can usually be sounded out. Say the word aloud, and you will often recognize it. For example, *yuel* = “evil”.

*y* and *i* represent the same vowel sounds. *Y* is often used where modern English uses *i*, so *lyue* = *live*.

The macron (a horizontal stroke printed over a letter, as above the *e* in *thē*) indicates that the following letter or syllable (usually an *m* or *n*) has been omitted, so *thē* = *them* or *then*. A curled macron, i.e. the tilde (~), represents an omitted *a*. By these means, scribes and early printers often abbreviated a word so that their columns would be neatly justified.

The þ (thorn) later became similar to a *Y* in handwriting (though not phonetically) and in this form it continued to be used by printers as an abbreviation for *th* in early printed books. When it was used in this way it was normally printed with a superscript *e* or *t* as an abbreviation, so *ye* = *the* and *yt* = *that*.

The silent *e* occurs much more often in early English spelling than it does in modern English. It was often used simply to expand the length of a word in order to justify a column.

Sometimes the *w* appears simply as two *u*s, that is two *v*s, so *well* = vvell.

The ampersand (*&*) is often used for *and* in early books.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, it was common to italicize proper names.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when English writers were reading a lot of German, it was popular to capitalize nouns.

It was not common to use *‘s* to indicate possession until the eighteenth century.

Up until about 1790, the *long s* (*ſ* or *ʃ*) was used for *s* at the beginning and in the middle of words. In Roman type the *long s* looks like an f with the cross-stroke on the left only, and in italic type it looks like a stretched round s.

Note on EEBO texts: A tilda ( ~ ) indicates an unreadable letter. It is usually an “n” but sometimes an “m”. Bracketed ellipses mean a portion of the text is unreadable.