Characters and Contractions Used in Early Printed Books
¯ The macron. A horizontal stroke printed over a letter to indicate that the following letter or syllable (usually an
n or
m) has been omitted. For example,
the is put for
them. A curled macron (tilde) represents an omitted
a. By this means, scribes and early printers often abbreviated a word so that their columns would be neatly justified.
The "Y" character, which came to be used to represent the runic "thorn" (þ - see above) was often used as an abbreviation for "th" in early printed books, and when it was used in this way it was normally printed with a superscript "e" or "t" as an abbreviation for "the" or "that."
Up till about 1790 the "long
s" 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.
u v The "U" and "V" are not distinguished phonetically in early English spelling. The "U" character is used for both the
v and
u sound when it occurs in the middle of a word, and the "V" character is normally used for either sound at the beginning of a word.
& The ampersand, often used for "and" in early books.
e The silent "e" occurs much more often in early English spelling than it does now. It was often used by printers simply to expand the length of a word in order to justify their columns of type
Changes in the English Language
About 3/4 of the way down the page.