The Eth is the letter that looks like a lower case f, but obviously replaces an s. The second Saxon letter, now departed, that was to be found in the 18th century, is the Eth. The thorn began disappearing about 1750, although I have seen vestiges of it in handwritten items as late as the early 19th century, doubtlessly written by older people who had learned the use of the Thorn in their youth. The Thorn is also found in abbreviations such as Ys, and Yt., representing “this” and “that”. It was pronounced TH, thereby making the name of our example business begin with “The”, not “Ye”. That letter in “Ye” is not a “Y”, but a Thorn. The Thorn is that Y-shaped letter often encountered in pseudo Old English business names, e.g. You have all seen both of them, although you might not have known them by name. That handles the missing letters, but what about the two additional letters that are now missing? Both of those letters crept into the English alphabet from the alphabet forms used by the Saxons. If not, it may be an indicator that the sampler was created prior to the mid 1700’s.) (It is useful to look at the alphabets on samplers to see if “J” and “U” are present. These dual-purpose letters were found in 18th century printed material through the mid-18th century, at which time they began to be replaced by “J” and “U”. You may have seen “Romanized” inscriptions on Courthouses that perpetuate this usage. The word “JUSTICE” would have been written “IVSTICE” by the ancient Romans. Roman alphabets had no “U” and no “J”, their places being filled by “V” and “I” respectively. However, certain characteristics of the Roman alphabet had to be taken into account, one of which was the missing letters. Widely used in medieval times and the 18th century, “Roman” fonts are still in common use today. Trajan’s column in Rome is often cited as the perfect example of Roman letters. Examples abounded in the many Roman inscriptions. One of the necessary ingredients toward filling the demand for more and more printed materials was a legible typeface.Ī particularly legible, and widely recognized, letterform was that designed by the Romans. (Imagine the cost of having a book handwritten!) Once books were available to wide strata of the populace, more people began to learn to read. The printing press made books more common and, more importantly, more affordable. Many court documents were written in a form known as “Gothic Secretary”, but even there, variation abounded. Each scribe or writing master might use an alphabet of his own invention, creating a form of job security, since no one untutored in the particular alphabet could read it. Prior to the invention of the printing press, alphabets abounded. To do so, we need to look back to the origins of our alphabet. To begin our investigation of the changes in our alphabet, let’s look first at the two missing letters. In 18th century written and printed materials, particularly those from the first half of the century, we often encounter two letters that are not in our current alphabet, while noting that two of our current letters are sometimes missing. However, we need only look back about 200 years to find that our alphabet hadn’t reached it’s present form until the end of the 18th century. We think of our alphabet as being static over the ages as if it had appeared full blown and perfect at some time in the past, and never needed modification.
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