Graphology and Orthography

Question 1

Orthography (Spelling) (3)

Answer 1

The modern preoccupation with ‘correct’ spelling is a relatively recent phenomenon
In the pre-print era when literacy was much less common, there was no fixed system- words were spelt according to regional pronunciation and personal preference.

Question 2

18th-century orthography

Answer 2

The gradual acceptance of the authority of dictionaries led to the ultimate fixing of spellings

Question 3

Modern orthography (2)

Answer 3

Modern spellings show evidence of previous pronunciations, e.g. the silent gh in words like night. Other words reflect their origin, e.g. psychology.

Question 4

Webster American Dictionary (1828) (3)

Answer 4

He tried to rationalise spellings along more phonetic lines
The writer G.B. Shaw proposed a radical redesign of the English alphabet – to no effect.
Some recent American influences have occurred,e.g. Jail (Gaol) and program (programme).

Question 5

Spelling changes (3)

Answer 5

doe’ – ‘do’
‘meane’ – ‘mean’
American spellings – color, center, anemia, plow

Question 6

Pre 17th century Graphology u/v (2)

Answer 6

u/v: In pre-17th Century texts, these letters were either interchangeable or used according to whether they occurred at the beginning (v) or elsewhere in a word (u).
Only later did they come to represent the vowel u and consonant v.

Question 7

18th-century Graphology y/i/j (2)

Answer 7

y/i/j: the use of y or i to represent the sound /i/ varied before the 18th Century dictionaries tried to stabilise practice.
‘j’ was originally a variation on i, so many words spelt today with j are found to have an initial i in many texts from the 17th century and earlier.

Question 8

The Long S (3)

Answer 8

Used into the 18th Century.
The use of the long s caused complications during printing because it overlapped other letters.
It was also confusing as it looked like an ‘f’, hense falling out of use

Question 9

Upper and lower case conventions (2)

Answer 9

17th Century- upper case letters were often used for all nouns as well as the beginnings of sentences
18th Century grammarians restricted their use- some uncertainty and variation of practice remains today.

Question 10

Punctuation marks (3)

Answer 10

Pre 16th Century texts- a single stroke(/) (verigule) sometimes did the job of a full stop or a comma
16th Century onwards- full stops served as commas. Modern English period- Colons, semi-colons and speech marks only started to appear

Question 11

Ligature

Answer 11

A feature of printed text that uses a line to join particular common combinations of letters together, especially clusters of consonants like ‘st’ or ‘ct’.