{"id":7574,"date":"2014-02-11T12:31:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T17:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/collation.folger.edu\/?p=7574"},"modified":"2016-02-20T11:08:51","modified_gmt":"2016-02-20T16:08:51","slug":"uv-ij-and-transcribing-other-early-modern-textual-oddities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/blog\/2014\/02\/uv-ij-and-transcribing-other-early-modern-textual-oddities\/","title":{"rendered":"u\/v, i\/j, and transcribing other early modern textual oddities"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re encountering early modern texts for the first time, you might be surprised not only that they use such variable spelling (heart? hart? harte?) but they seem to use the wrong letters in some places. And then there are funny abbreviations! Even adept readers of early texts might stumble when it comes to making sense of some of this, especially when faced with producing transcriptions. To try to make things a bit simpler, here\u2019s a primer on reading early modern letterforms and an account of The Collation<\/em>\u2019s house transcription style.<\/p>\n

u\/v, i\/j, s\/long-s<\/h3>\n

One of the first oddities that catches my students\u2019 eyes is what seems to be mixed-up uses of “u” and “v,” and “i” and “j”: \u201cvsual\u201d or \u201ciustice,\u201d for instance. It\u2019s not hard to work out what those words are, I don\u2019t think (\u201cusual\u201d and \u201cjustice\u201d), but it\u2019s easier when you learn that these follow established rules, rather than randomly substituting one letter for another. In both cases, it\u2019s helpful to think of the two forms as different shapes of the same letter, the usage of which is determined by its location in the word. For u\/v, “u” is used in the middle and end of words, while “v” is used at the start of a word; for i\/j, “i” is used at the start and in the middle of words, while “j” is used at the end. This is akin to written languages today that use a different letter form when that letter occurs at the end of a word—as in Hebrew, for instance, with a nun (\u05e0 )\u00a0and a final nun (\u05df)—although it’s not a typographical feature that has survived in English. The shape of the letters has nothing to do with their pronunciation; think, perhaps, of the different ways we voice the letter “c.” (These rules apply to the lower-case form of these letters; uppercase usage tends to use V and never U up until the middle of the seventeenth century [see Goran’s recent post<\/a> for examples of that shift in Flemish books].)<\/p>\n

\"u_v_and_i_j\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What tends to trip readers up more frequently is the use of the long-s, which to our eyes looks so akin to an “f” that it can sometimes be very hard not to read it that way.<\/p>\n

\"post_images-002\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But the rules for long-s are, as with u\/v and i\/j, follow the letter\u2019s placement in the word: short-s at the end of a word, long-s at the beginning and in the middle. (Transcriptions that rely on OCR to recognize characters mix these letters up to sometimes hilarious, and confusing, results<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The examples I\u2019ve given here are all in roman font, but they hold true in other fonts and in handwriting, as well. But black-letter fonts introduce additional letterforms, as does handwriting. There are multiple forms of the letter \u201cr\u201d in black letter; secretary hands have multiple forms of \u201cr\u201d as well as of \u201ce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cranmer_Thomas-The_Byble_in_Englyshe-STC-2070-104_10-p10_2.tif-001\"<\/a>
“let the earth bring forth” showing two different forms of “r”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

abbreviations<\/h3>\n

The first abbreviation that can throw readers into confusion also stems from a letterform confusions: ye<\/sup>. Given that that first letter looks exactly like a \u201cy\u201d it\u2019s not surprising that it\u2019s survived as a kind of joke indication of oldness.<\/p>\n

\"post_images\"<\/a>
images from Flickr users Mark H. Anbinder<\/a>, Matt Nutley<\/a>, and Greg Turner<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what we are reading today as a \u201cy\u201d would have been read as the now obsolete letter thorn: \u201cye<\/sup>\u201d is an abbreviation of \u201cthe.\u201d (Of course, \u201cye\u201d is a word in its own right—an equivalent of \u201cyou\u201d—but the superscript \u201ce\u201d indicates an abbreviation for \u201cthe.\u201d) Similarly, \u201cyt<\/sup>\u201d would not be \u201cit\u201d but \u201cthat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"5_Cuningham_William-1566_A_new_almanach_and_prognostication-STC-433-1675_12-p1.tif_-825x119\"<\/a>
“at th<\/em>e west end of Poules.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The use of a superscript to indicate an abbreviation is a frequent one: \u201cwch<\/sup>,\u201d \u201cMaty<\/sup>,\u201d \u201cyor<\/sup>.\u201d Other abbreviations can be marked with a macron or tittle to indicate a missing letter, typically an \u201cm\u201d or an \u201cn\u201d:<\/p>\n

\"post_images-003\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are many other abbreviations in use in manuscripts and in early printed works, but these are the ones that crop up the most frequently.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

transcriptions<\/h3>\n

Being able to read early modern texts easily is one thing; making decisions about how to transcribe those texts is another. Different projects will require different standards. Do you want a fully modernized edition, one that adapts the text\u2019s spelling and punctuation to conform with modern usage? Do you want a diplomatic transcription that strives to preserve and indicate all the original textual and often material features of the document? The former will produce a very readable text, albeit one that loses most of its historical situatedness; the latter will produce a text rooted in its time, but often at the expense of readability.<\/p>\n

On The Collation<\/em>, we strive for a semi-diplomatic style of transcription that will work for printed texts, manuscripts, and graphic materials. Our goal is to present texts that are readable but that are also faithful to our belief that these texts are historically embedded in material texts: we look at objects through a historical lens, and we want our transcriptions to convey that.<\/p>\n

In practice, this means we follow these guidelines:<\/p>\n