Typography

An understanding of typography is important for reading the old texts, just as much as one of language is for reading things older than one’s native tongue. With an understanding of typography, all languages become clearer and legible; any time period can be deciphered by the inquisitive eye. Perhaps the most confusing, and intricate, typographical periods in European history was that of the Carolingian script and others during the Medieval Age. What gives it its unique breathe of intricate detail was the unlimited multitude of ligatures and symbols used to represent certain consonant clusters, words and phrases, that are almost lost today. Typography was a matter that required an unlimited ability to innovate, as well as use the greatest creative faculties of man, for serious works that would come to define European literature. Alone we see the works of the monks who invented pagan scripts for their bibles; grand effigies of baroque Gothic texts whose towering, monolithic letters were but indecipherable works of mysticism to laymen. Historical typography is also the progenitor of our alphabet today; a legacy which should be understood proper.

We see that the general shrinkage in unique typographical characters has come when mass education and literacy is made a mandate, and thus the official and common alphabet is reduced to a minimum of workable characters, and when block-based printing and typing takes over writing. The general lettering of a language shifts from the multitude of diverse characters of the small caste of monks and record keepers to the few and limited characters used by the masses; the force which is the greatest representative of a language shifts from the few writers to the masses.

This has taken much of the diversity and art, as well as fun, out of writing. It is a tradition which, if is to survive, must be studied in its past examples; this too leads to the greater path of understanding the old texts. That is our main objective: fluid literacy in antiquated texts so as not to inhibit understanding from the simple ignorance of letters. Therefore we present to the dear reader a brief treatise of the historical letters of English that are no longer used in the modern era, but that share a legacy that relates to other sister languages as well.

One of the first thing that confuses the novice when reading old texts is the seemingly awkward placement of J’s and I’s, as well as U’s and V’s. It should be noted that the Latin alphabet, which existed long before English was put into writing, had only one character to represent I and J and only one character to represent U and V; the I and J, U and V were simply variations of each other usually written one way or another by the writer’s personal handwriting. One can easily see how J is an elongated I with a descending curl, just as U can be seen merely as a curved V. In the original Latin languages, these different forms had no difference between each other in pronunciation: I had one sound and V had one sound. It was only when the Latin alphabet was applied to other languages did those applicants use the different forms of the same letter to signify different sounds that did not exist in Latin.

This is precisely the reason why the “W” is called the double-u. Composed of two non-curved U’s, it represented the sound of U when used as a consonant, that is, paired with a vowel. A well known example is Shakespeare’s manuscripts, in which words like “what” and “welcome” can be seen spelled as “vvhat” and “vvelcome”. It proved to be a useful character and soon the two U’s merged together to create an entirely new letter that is featured today in the alphabet of English and other languages. 

Left: Some internet humor.

Wynn is the “w” letter, used before the “v” was doubled. It looks somewhat like a P. It can be distinguished from the P in that the arc that comes down is not angular, such as in the P, which goes straight and perpendicular to the main staff of the letter. Wynn, on the other hand, goes down in a curve that flows into the staff.

The S was one of the many characters which had many forms and only settled to a single one when the printing press was invented. The most common forms of the S were the current one and the “long s” which looks like a lower case F (f) but without the line running through its middle. The Long S can still be seen in the German character ß (called the Eszett) as a combination (a ligature) of the Long S and the regular S we see today. 

Þ, þ

Thorn is a letter that represented the sound "th" on the word Thorn, thunder and thankful. It came directly from the rune that meant the same thing; it looks somewhat like a P except that the loop is in the center of the staff, not the top. 

Ð, ð

It's counterpart is Eth, the stroked D, which represented the sound "th" in the words the, Heather, and there. It is a D with a bar running through it's middle, and in its lower case form the top part of the D is curved to the left. Both the Thorn and the Eth are still used in Scandinavian languages like Icelandic and Faroese.

So whenever you’re looking at a foreign script and you see a strange symbol, think about what it might represent or if it’s a ligature!