Spelling and letters

Spelling

No fixed spelling

There was no 'correct' spelling. Any spelling that showed the spoken word would do, and one writer could spell a word two ways on a page.D&K-S p. 16; P&Y p. ix

Names too

Names were spelt as freely as other words: Smith and Smyth can be one familyD&K-S p. 16; P&Y p. ix

Read it aloud

The sound is often less strange than the spellingP&Y p. ix

Letters that are one letter

u and v

Two forms of one letter, not two letters. v often comes first in a word and u inside it (vnto, haue), but writers kept no fixed rule.D&K-S pp. 15–16

i and j

Two forms of one letter. j is used mostly as the last i of a numeral, as in xxiij.D&K-S p. 14

y for th

In the, that and a few other words, y stands for the old letter thorn. Read yᵉ as the and yᵗ as that, never ye. See moreD&K-S p. 19; P&Y p. ix

The crossed ll

A bar through ll. In older hands it can stand for a final e (-lle). By Elizabethan times it is usually just a flourish, a way of writing the letter.Petti pp. 22–23; P&Y p. xii; D&K-S p. 23

Capitals and stops

Capitals

Used freely, often on words we would not capitalise. Some writers used a capital C or D as a plain first letter.D&K-S pp. 13–14, 23

The virgule ( / )

A slanting stroke used much like a comma. Common before about 1580, rare after 1600. See moreD&K-S p. 18; Petti p. 26

The point ( . )

The oldest English stop, used for a full stop and, until the early 1600s, sometimes for a commaPetti p. 25

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)

Facts from these sources, in our own words. Page numbers are the printed pages.