Historical context
Line fillers and layout marks
In a deed or an account nobody wanted a gap where words could be added later. Scribes filled the ends of lines and used a few marks to lay out the page.
Why fill a line
- No room to add
- In legal documents the end of a line was not left blank. A flourish or a filler took the space, so no one could slip words in later.P&Y pp. x, xii; Hector p. 46
- Few broken words
- Formal documents avoid breaking a word at the line end: the space is filled insteadHector p. 46; P&Y p. x
Fillers
- Shapes
- Usually curved, curled or looped, sometimes a wavy line or a flourish on the last letterD&K-S p. 18; P&Y p. xii
- Not words
- A filler stands for nothing. Transcriptions leave it out. See moreP&Y p. xii
- Not the double hyphen
- A = at the line end usually marks a word broken across two lines. Read the halves as one word.D&K-S p. 18; Hector p. 46
Laying out the page
- Braces
- A brace } joins several lines, as when items in an account share one sumPetti p. 27
- Catchwords
- The first word of the next page or gathering, written at the foot of the one before, to keep the leaves in orderPetti p. 6
- Marginal headings
- A word in the margin that says what an entry is. A manor court roll puts the manor's name in the margin of each court's heading.Conisbrough
- Dockets and endorsements
- Notes on the back or the outside fold saying what the document is. They were often added later, by someone filing it.Hector pp. 13, 16
Sources
- Petti: A. G. Petti, English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden (1977)
- D&K-S: G. E. Dawson and L. Kennedy-Skipton, Elizabethan Handwriting 1500–1650 (1966)
- P&Y: J. F. Preston and L. Yeandle, English Handwriting 1400–1650 (1999)
- Hector: L. C. Hector, The Handwriting of English Documents (1958)
- Conisbrough: Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield, Conisbrough court rolls: Using manorial records (online)
Facts from these sources, in our own words. Page numbers are the printed pages.