3 Characteristics of Older Scots
This section offers a brief account of the main
characteristics of Older Scots.
More detailed and technical treatments follow in subsequent sections.
OSc presents difficulties even for
the reader who is fluent in ModSc, simply because of changes happening
naturally with the passage of time.
But there has undoubtedly been more obsolescence in vocabulary than is
the case between EModE and modern StE, and there is also a massive literary
discontinuity: for instance,
whereas neologisms and catchphrases originating in the works of Shakespeare are
part of everyday English, the works of Gavin Douglas, once so highly regarded
in England as well as in Scotland, are all but forgotten. Fortunately, at least part of the
initial strangeness of OSc is merely superficial, arising from unfamiliar
spelling conventions. But as a 16th century
Englishman commented of a work in Scots:
Howbeit the same
is not so hard but that after the reading of two leaues a man may easily enough
grow acquainted with it, and doubtlesse the knowledge and monumentes therein
contained are wel worth so small a trauell to understand them. (anonymous and undated "copie of a
letter written by one in London", c1571, quoted by Bald, 1928: 168)
Before outlining the spelling system
of OSc, we shall look briefly at some other characteristics of the language at
this period.
3.1 Faux amis
Naturally there are many unfamiliar senses of
familiar words. The modern reader
is particularly liable to be misled by certain common faux amis:
a - 'one', and in ESc 'a'
and – ‘if’ as well as ‘and’
ane - 'a' as well as 'one'
but – ‘without’ as well as ‘but’
gif – ‘if’ as well as ‘give’
into, intil(l – ‘in’ as well as ‘into’
let – ‘prevent’
mete – ‘food’
quhil(l – ‘until’
quik – ‘alive’
til(l – ‘to’ as well as ‘until’ (s.v. to)
to - 'too' as well as 'to'
wa(l)kand – ‘waking’ (with silent <l>, see below)
without – ‘outside’ as well as ‘lacking’ (s.v. without(in).
3.2 Grammar
The grammar of OSc causes few difficulties,
apart from those occasioned by poetic licence, legal convolutions, and
sometimes by sheer bad writing. Most readers will encounter the language in
modern editions, where punctuation has been supplied by the editor. The only problem of parsing that is likely
to remain sometimes is a verse line consisting of a 'dangling participle' - a
participial clause that could belong either to the preceding or following
clause, e.g.:
Bot than (god wate) quhow afferyt wes I
Traistand tyl be stranglyt with bestiall,
Amyd a stok richt preualy I stall
(London edn. of The Palice of Honour, from Bawcutt ed., 1967, ll.197-9)
Bot than God wait how affrayit was I,
Traistand to be stranglit with bestiall.
Amid a stock richt priuelie I stall
(ibid. Edinburgh edn.).
The impersonal verb think as in me thinks, me thocht 'it seems/seemed to me' can cause
confusion. In some styles of
verse, the verb can (not 'can' but an altered form of (be)gan) is used redundantly to provide an
extra syllable (see §7.8.15). The large number of homonyms
of some common grammatical words can also create difficulties. For instance, na can be the negative particle ('not'
or, following a word, '-n't'), the
negative quantifier ('no, not any'), the word of contradiction ('no, nay'), the
conjunction 'nor', or the conjunction 'than', sometimes in constructions not
found in ModSc or StE.
3.3 Orthography
For the symbols and conventions used in discussing sounds and spellings, see Abbreviations and Conventions.
3.3.1 Variability
The reader of OSc, or the dictionary user
trying to locate specific words, is immediately confronted with the rampant
individualism of a spelling system where a person's orthography is as
personally distinctive as his or her handwriting (see §5.2.2). As in other languages at this time, there were no fixed
spellings for words (this came later as a side-effect of printing). The pupil learned his (less often, her)
letters, i.e. the values attached to letters and groups of letters, and applied
these values when faced with the necessity of spelling a particular word. But even by the standards of the time,
the system, especially in MSc, allowed of many options, accrued over centuries
and seldom weeded out. To some
extent, the hypothetical freedoms were constrained by conventions of usage, for
instance, favouring certain options in certain positions in words, notably:
• <y> rather than <i> word-finally and in the vicinity of
minim letters,
• <w> rather than <u, v>
word-finally,
• <v> initially and <u> medially (for both consonant and
vowel values);
and favouring older-established spellings (such
as fossilised ones) over innovations (such as reverse spellings, see
below). Etymology is also a strong
constraint in the case of Romance loanwords,[48]
with spellings such as <c> for /s/, <que> and silent initial /h/
persisting (and likewise <ph> in words of Greek origin). Again, this is not so much a fixing of
individual word spellings as the result of familiarity with Latin and French,
and the integration of a multilingual person's spelling habits across different
languages.
The absence of fixed word spellings must have made the initial acquisition of literacy much easier, but conversely it increased the processing burden on the reader, including the modern reader, who of course approaches the language without the benefit of a native speaker's knowledge.
3.3.2 Some features of OSc spelling
The modern reader is particularly likely to be
misled when spellings usually associated with consonants are used for vowels
and vice versa. Some things to look out for are:
• the interchange of <i, y> (as in ME),
e.g. <iere> 'year', <tyme> 'time';
• the interchange of <u, v, w>, e.g.
<wys> could be 'wise' or 'use', <vin> could be 'win', 'wine' or uin 'oven';
• the use of silent <l> in the graphemes
<al, ol, ul>, e.g. <cals> 'cause', <nolt> nowt 'cattle', <pulder> 'powder'.
The last are reverse spellings. After the loss of /l/ in words such as salt, gold, pull (l-vocalisation, see §6.23), the
spellings with (now silent) <l> mostly continued to be used. The graphemes <al, ol, ul>
therefore became associated with the vowels now occurring in these words, and
it became possible to apply them unhistorically to other words containing the
same vowels, e.g. <nolt> for nowt 'cattle' (< ON naut): cf. colt (< OE colt), now pronounced, though rarely
spelled, <cowt>.
When reduced forms of words are run
together in OSc, e.g. Is 'I shall' (see §9.3.7), no apostrophes are used (except in the latest
texts). On reduced forms of the before vowels (<thend> 'the
end', etc.), see the def. art. 14.
The /n/ of the indefinite article is
sometimes carried over to open a word beginning with a vowel: see the DOST article on N.
Some prefixes are commonly written
as separate words: see e.g. to- prefix1-2 and non- adv. prefix.
Some other spelling conventions of OSc that differ from modern StE are:
• <ch> for /x/ e.g. <richt> 'right', as well as for /ʧ/ e.g. fleche (rather than <tch>);
• <sch> for /ʃ/, e.g. scho;
• <quh> for /ʍ/, e.g. quha 'who';
• <ih, jh> for initial /ʤ/, e.g. Ihon 'John', as well as <i, j>;
• <ff> for capital <F>;[49]
• <kk> preferred to <ck>;
• <g> for non-initial /ʤ/, e.g. hege (rather than <dg>);
•
<tht> varies with <th>, and <cht> with <ch>;
• superscript <t> is used variously for
<tht, th, cht, ch>;
• <th(t)> and <ch(t)> are sometimes
used interchangeably with each other, e.g. borch(t, and culrach, culrath;[50]
• the OE letter <þ> 'thorn' was used (as
in ME) as an alternative to <th> e.g. <þat, þt >
'that'. In the styles of
handwriting used in MSc, <þ> lost its ascender and became in most cases
indistinguishable from <y>.
Editors vary in their treatment of this letter, printing it variously as
<th>, <þ> or <y>.
In DOST it is altered to <th>;
• the letter <ȝ> 'yogh'[51] was used (as in ME) for /j/ as in
<ȝere, ȝhere> 'year'.
In manuscripts of the MSc period, it is indistinguishable from
<z>, which is written with a tail.
Conversely, <z> is used for both in print (see the DOST article on ȝ).
3.4 Sound-change
The extraordinary variability of the
OSc spelling system arises both directly and indirectly from processes of sound
change. We will therefore glance
briefly here at the main changes as they affected the orthography. For a detailed discussion, see §6.
3.4.1 Terminology
Sounds are discussed here in terms
of phonemes. A phoneme is an abstract unit, a single
meaningful sound distinction in a language. Sounds that are perceived to be the same, by native speakers
of a language, actually vary according to their phonetic environment. For instance, the phoneme /p/ has two main phonetic
realisations, with
and without a following puff of air known as aspiration. Compare the pronunciation of pin (which will blow out a match) and spin, with /p/ in the environment of a
preceding /s/ (which will not).
Phonemes are conventionally represented
within slash brackets, thus /p/; phonetic realisations within square brackets,
thus [ph] (aspirated) and [p=] (unaspirated). Phonemes also vary in realisation amongst
accents, both social and geographical, and since no language variety is
unmixed, individual speakers typically use a range of variation, for instance,
to cite a well-known social marker of modern Scottish speech across the
Scots-Scottish English continuum, a mixture of glottal plosives (glottal stops)
and alveolar plosives for /t/.
Describing the phonemes of a language can be compared to describing insect colonies in a field. First we divide the field into a grid of equal squares, each with a name, such as /a, o, p, t/. If each square has one and only one insect colony, it is easy to name the colonies after the abstract grid squares. Otherwise, we need to qualify our symbols, e.g. /a/ and /a:/ (short and long vowels respectively). Often colonies are spread over two or more squares: we choose the symbols that best represent their positions. Over time, the colonies may drift, until there comes a point when we decide that a colony is largely in a different square and should be renamed. (In the historical record of a language, sound change often becomes evident precisely because writers begin to change the spellings they use.)
Thus, we have the problem of what
symbol to use in discussing the history of a colony. One method is to continue to refer to the colony by the
symbol allocated to it at the start of the study. This corresponds to the use of OE vowel symbols in
discussing the subsequent history of the vowels of Scots and English; the usual
method until recently, and still sometimes used. Thus we speak of the reflexes (outcomes) of e.g. OE ā.[52] In the present work, we use the system of vowel numbers
devised by Aitken (1977), revised
in Aitken (2002). See Figure 3 (below).
The drifting of whole colonies represents, in our analogy, the type of sound-change known as unconditioned. Such a drift can, of course, lead to merger with a neighbouring colony/sound. This can, however, be avoided by the neighbours moving out of the way. The equivalent in terms of sound change is a sound shift (notably, below, the Great Vowel Shift). Sound-changes are, however, often conditioned by particular environmental factors (such as word-stress, and the preceding and following sounds). In this case, in our analogy, different parts of the insect colony would be differently affected, resulting eventually in the colony splitting, especially if part of it is captured by and merges with a neighbouring colony.
3.4.2 Phonemic and graphemic
variation
In many cases, the operation of
sound changes created doublets, pairs of word forms, with one showing the
effect of the change, the other not, for instance pow and pull, with and without loss of /l/ by
l-vocalisation. Part of the
variability of OSc, then, is based on actual differences in pronunciation,
while other aspects are purely orthographic. Beyond the guidance provided in specific dictionary entries,
the reconstruction of pronunciation requires a certain knowledge of historical
phonology. Accordingly, we
concentrate in this section on spelling variation as such.
3.4.3 Vowels
Vowel sounds are much more subject
to change over time than consonants, probably because they involve no contact
between the tongue and the other organs of articulation, and are therefore, in
some sense, harder to calibrate.
By the same token, their spellings are less stable and more liable to be
misleading.
3.4.3.1 Double consonants
In OE, consonants spelled with a
double letter, such as <dd>, were pronounced long. Vowels were shortened in this
environment in late OE, so doubling a consonant letter became a way of
indicating the shortness of the preceding vowel.
3.4.3.2 Diphthongs
Other important changes created new
diphthongs in the pre-literary Scots/early ME period. OE /j/, spelled <
>, combined with a preceding
front vowel, e.g. OE hē > hay. OE /ɣ/, also spelled <g>, combined with a preceding back vowel, e.g. OE
āgen > awn
'own'. OE /w/ also combined with a preceding back
vowel, e.g. OE cnāwan > knaw 'know'. Again, there are
differences in detail between Scots and English, resulting in e.g. Scots snaw 'snow' with the same vowel as gnaw (Vowel 12) and grow with the same vowel as gowk ‘cuckoo’ (Vowel 13). The overworked letter <g> was not
kept in diphthong spellings, but the <w> became part of a number of digraphs:
<aw, ew, iw, ow>.
3.4.3.3 Vowel Length
Scottish students are often puzzled
by the mention of long and short vowels in English. This is because for most vowels in Scots (and partly also in
ScStE), vowel length is governed by the phonetic environment following the
vowel, rather than being intrinsic to the vowel, e.g. the originally long vowel
/i/ is still long in see, but short in eat. The rule for vowel
length, known as the Scottish Vowel-Length Rule (SVLR) or Aitken's Law, is
described in §6.28. Here it is
only necessary to note that the vowel systems of OE and OSc had long and short
vowels, in pairs that were originally close enough to each other in quality to
capture words from each other in processes of lengthening and shortening. A number of sound changes, culminating
in the Great Vowel Shift (below), disrupted this parallelism by altering the
qualities of the long vowels. It
then became possible for new 'shorts' to be created by the SVLR in the second
half of the 16th century.
It is probably this disruption of the traditional quantity system that
we see reflected in late MSc spelling habits (cf. Meurman-Solin, 1999), where
long vowel spellings (final <e>[53]
and digraphs) are used for traditionally short vowels, e.g. <cate, cait>
'cat', and short vowel spellings (double consonants) are used for long vowels,
e.g. <fatte, faitt> 'fate'.
Double long spellings partly solve the problem, i.e. both final
<e> and a digraph, e.g. <faite, faitte> but these are not always
reserved for long vowels either, so <caite, caitte> 'cat' is not
impossible. Mixed spellings, with
double consonants and final <e> or a digraph, e.g. <catte, caitt,
fatte, faitte> become quite common.
3.4.3.4 Open Syllable Lengthening
In PreSc, Open Syllable Lengthening
(OSL) lengthened short vowels in stressed syllables followed by an unstressed
syllable, where the stressed syllable was 'open', i.e. ended in a vowel. These conditions were met in many words
with inflectional endings that were later lost, e.g. name. The retention in spelling of a lost final vowel gives us the
characteristic orthographic convention of Scots and English whereby a silent
final <e> modifies the vowel in the preceding syllable.[54]
3.4.3.5 The Great Vowel Shift
The most important sound shift in
the history of Scots, as of English, is the Great Vowel Shift (GVS). Crudely, the effect of this was to
raise long vowels. As one
consequence, Scots and English spelling is out of line with Continental sound
values for historically long vowels, e.g. cf. the vowels of the loanwords estate,
noble, complete with their modern French equivalents
état, noble, complet. Since the GVS affected only long vowels, the
shortening and lengthening sound changes that preceded it (such as Homorganic
Cluster Lengthening (HOCL)) take on added significance: they determine whether
groups of words are part of the input to the GVS or not, e.g. blind was not lengthened and consequently
not affected by the GVS, in Scots or Northern English.
Two other important changes preceded
the GVS, one north of the Humber, affecting Scots and Northern English
dialects, the other south of the Humber.
The northern change results in front vowels in words such as mune 'moon' < OE mōna (Vowel 7); the southern change
results in a back vowel in words such as home < OE hām (= Scots hame, Vowel 4). Scots
and English therefore differ in the input to the GVS. There are also differences in the details of the sound
shift. In particular, Scots does
not shift Vowel 6, e.g. doon, hoose, preserving it as a monophthong /u:/.
3.5 The
vowel system of OSc
Figure
3: Vowel systems of Scots: a rough historical outline (based on Aitken, 1977: Table 1 and
Aitken, 2002: Figure 21). Only the
main spellings of each vowel are shown here. Some others are discussed below.
Figure 3 shows the vowels of OSc,
with their ModSc outcomes, and their usual ESc and MSc spellings. Further orthographic possibilities are
discussed above and in §5. The main (usually OE) source is mentioned for each
vowel below. For a fuller list of sources, see §6.1.
Vowel 1, as in mine and five, was diphthongised by the GVS.
Subsequent to the establishment of
the SVLR, it split into two distinct diphthongs, as shown in Figure 3.
The usual spelling reflects the main
OE sources, ī and
ȳ (the
latter having merged with the former in late OE), with length often signalled
by <e> after a consonant (see §3.4.3.4 on OSL), e.g. <mine>, or in
MSc (but infrequently) by the digraph <yi, iy>, e.g. <myin>.
Occasional late MSc spellings in
<ay, ai> reflect the GVS diphthongisation.
Vowel 2, as in sene 'seen', was raised by the GVS.
The usual spelling reflects the main
OE source, ē,
with length often signalled by <e> after a consonant, e.g. <sene>,
or by the digraph <ei, ey>, e.g. <sein>. Notice that the latter is also a Vowel 8a spelling, thus
e.g. <hey> could be 'he' or 'hay'.
The anglicised spelling <ee>
appears in late MSc (and see §8.2.1).
Occasional spellings in <ea>
in late MSc are reverse spellings reflecting the merger in some dialects of
Vowel 3 with Vowel 2.
Vowel 3, as in lene adj. 'lean', mostly merges in the
course of the GVS either with Vowel 2 (most dialects south of the Forth, and
also much of the North-East) or with Vowel 4 (Fife, Angus, and parts of the
NE). The merger in some dialects
with Vowel 4 is only rarely reflected in spelling.
There is no shortening before /d/
(as in English head) so this includes e.g. hede 'head'.
There is no distinction in spelling
between Vowel 3, from OE ǣ and ēa,
and Vowel 2, until the borrowing of <ea> spellings from PreStE. Thus the
usual spellings are the same as for Vowel 2, e.g. <lene, lein>.
Vowel 4, as in bane, developed as a front vowel (in
contrast to English bone), and raised by the GVS.
The usual spelling reflects the main
OE source, ā,
with length often signalled by <e> after a consonant, e.g. <bane>,
or in MSc by the digraph <ai, ay>, e.g. <bain>. Notice that the latter is also the
usual Vowel 8 spelling, thus e.g. <payn> could be '(window) pane' or
'pain'.
The spelling <ae> is also
found e.g. frae
(see §8.2.1).
Occasional spellings in <e>
reflect the GVS raising.
Occasional spellings in <ea>
in late MSc are reverse spellings reflecting the merger in some dialects of
Vowel 3 with Vowel 4.
Vowel 5 consists mainly of originally short
vowels that have undergone OSL, e.g. cole 'coal', and French loans, e.g. noble.
In ModSc it has usually merged with
Vowel 18.
The usual spelling, <o>,
reflects the sources, with length often signalled by <e> after a
consonant, e.g. <cole>, or in MSc by the digraph <oi, oy>, e.g.
<coil>. Notice that the latter
is also the usual Vowel 9 (and in ESc also Vowel 10) spelling, thus
<coil> could also be 'coil'.
Vowel 6, from OE ū, as in doun, did not diphthongise by the
GVS.
The usual spelling <ou> is AN
in origin, with Scots adding the alternatives <ov, ow>. Word-finally, <ow> is preferred.
Notice that these spellings are shared by Vowel 13, thus e.g. <grow>
could be 'grue, shudder' or 'grow'.
Following l-vocalisation, the
reverse spelling <ul>, with silent <l>, is found, e.g.
<pulder> 'powder'.
Vowel 7, as in mune, fronted north of the Humber prior
to the GVS, merged with OF
The usual ESc spelling reflects the
main OE source, ō,
with length often signalled by <e> after a consonant, e.g. <mone>.
<o> continued to be the usual
spelling word-finally in MSc, e.g. <do>.
Non-finally, MSc has <u, v,
w> with length often signalled
by <e> after a consonant, e.g. <mvne>, or the digraph <ui, uy,
vi, vy, wi, wy>, e.g. <mwyn>.
Notice that the digraph spellings are also the usual MSc Vowel 10
spellings, thus <juin> could be 'June' or 'join'.
The anglicised spelling <oo>
appears in late MSc (and see §8.2.1).
(This gives rise to Vowel 6 spelling pronunciations in ModSc, e.g. Toom
Tabard and aboon (for abune 'above').)
Vowel 8, as in pain, has merged with Vowel 4 (e.g. pane) in most ModSc dialects. On the
date of this merger, and the MSc rhyming practice, see §6.29.
Word-finally (Vowel 8a), the ModSc outcome remains
diphthongal. This diphthong is the
same as the SVLR-short outcome of Vowel 1 (which cannot itself occur in
word-final position). This merger is apparently later, then, than the
establishment of the SVLR.
The OSc spelling <ai, ay>
reflects the AN source ai. This spelling is also used in MSc, as we have seen, for Vowel 4.
Vowel 9, as in noise, was introduced into the language
in AN and OF loans.
The spelling <oi, oy> reflects
the source, oi. It is also used, as we have seen, for
Vowel 5.
Vowel 10, as in point, was also introduced into the
language in AN loans. In ModSc,
the outcome is the same as the SVLR-short outcome of Vowel 1 and Vowel 8a. This merger is apparently later, then,
than the establishment of the SVLR.
In ESc, following French spelling
practice, Vowel 10 is not distinguished in spelling from Vowel 9. The spelling
<ui, uy, vi, vy, wi, wy> is characteristic of MSc, and is also, as we
have seen, used for Vowel 7.
Vowel 11, as in dey 'die', is numbered as a separate
vowel because it is still distinct in the rhyme practice of Barbour and the
author of Ratis Raving, but otherwise it is merged with Vowel 2. It only occurs word-finally,
and the spellings are the same as Vowel 2.
Vowel 12, as in law, became a monophthong in MSc.
The date of its rounding to [ɔ] in Central Scots is uncertain.
The spelling <au, av, aw>
reflects the OF source au (e.g. cause), as well as OE aw (e.g. claw) and āw (e.g. snaw). Word-finally, <aw> is preferred.
The l-vocalised outcome of Vowel 17
(e.g. aw 'all')
merges with Vowel 12, resulting in MSc reverse spellings with silent <l>
in other Vowel 12 words, e.g.
<chalmer> ‘chamber’ and the place-name Falkirk.
Vowel 13, as in loun 'calm' and grow, remains a diphthong in ModSc.
The spelling <ow, ov, ou>
reflects the OE source ōw. It is also used, as we
have seen, for Vowel 6. Word-finally, <ow> is preferred.
Vowel 14 consisted of two separate
diphthongs in the earliest texts of ESc, /i:u/ Vowel 14a and /ε:u/ Vowel 14b(i), which merged as /iu/, although the
usual spelling <ew, ev, eu> is more appropriate to /ε:u/ (see §6.9.5).
Vowel 14 remains separate in Modern Southern
Scots, but in most dialects became /ju/ in MSc (e.g. dew, due), merging with Vowel 6, and losing
/j/ after some consonants (e.g. true, blue).
Some MSc dialects had instead of Vowel
14b(i) a separate
diphthong, Vowel 14b(ii), which gives ModSc deow, etc. for dew, etc. (now mainly NE, but formerly more widespread). This is not normally reflected in
spelling, apart from a few <(y)ow> spellings in MSc.
Vowels 15-19, the short vowels, are less
complicated in their spellings.
Examples are:
• Vowel 15, OE i, y: pin,
• Vowel 16, OE e: men,
• Vowel 17, OE æ, a: man,
• Vowel 18, OE o: lok,
• Vowel 19, OE u: burn.
As in English, Vowel 19 usually has
<o> for clarity rather than <u> in the vicinity of other letters
written with minim strokes, e.g. wonder and the prefix <on-> un-.
The realisation (exact
pronunciation) of Vowel 15 in ModSc is considerably lower than that of the
corresponding vowel in English accents, and this was apparently the case also
in MSc, on the evidence of occasional spellings in <e> (see §5.2.8).
The realisation of Vowel 19 was
apparently still rounded in the late 16th century, more like Vowel 6
than the present ModSc pronunciation, on the evidence of late MSc interchange
of short and long vowel spellings (see above) between these two, including
<ou> spellings for Vowel 19.
Aitken (2002: §23), on the evidence of 18th century Scottish
English, considers that Vowel 19 was still rounded at that time, but this is
not accepted by Macafee (2004), who sees the 18th century forms as
transient interdialectal phenomena (like many others) resulting from contact
with StE, and points out that the unrounded realisation is found not only in
most of Lowland Scotland but also in Ulster Scots, where it was presumably
taken in the 17th century.
3.6 Manuscripts and modern editions
Many readers of OSc have no occasion to look at texts in manuscript. For those who do, excellent guidance can be found in Simpson (1973) and Rosie (1994). However, it is useful for the dictionary user to be aware of the difference between manuscripts and modern printed editions, and the degree of editorial intervention that is practised. There is a margin of error that has to be borne in mind, since much of the DOST excerption and editing was done before microfilm, etc., made facsimiles of manuscripts and early printed books more easily available, and forms are therefore cited from the editions then existing. See the notes under the letters J, L, M, Q, S3, U, ȝ, and s.vv. and, letter, li., not, quod, s(c)hiref, scor(e, sir(e.
In
secretary hand, the main style of handwriting in most of the period, <t>
and <c> are easily confused with each other, as are <f> and the
long form of <s>, and sometimes also <e> and <i>. Combinations of minim strokes can be
confused, e.g. <u> and <n> (see e.g. abufe), and either of these with <ri>. <ß> can stand for <s, ss> or <is>
word-finally (in the combination <sß>).
It can also be an abbreviation of <ser> or the word sir(e. The inflection -is is frequently abbreviated. There is an abbreviation that variously
stands for <ir, ar, ri, re>.
Initial <pro>, <con, com>, <per, par>, and the word and have their own abbreviations. Jesus is usually abbreviated as Ihs or Ihus. Numbers in scores, hundreds and thousands are generally shown
as 2xx, 2c, 2m, etc.
Final <e>, as expanded by modern editors, is often no more than a
flourish of the pen, probably a habit carried over from Latin, where most words
have either an inflectional ending or an abbreviation in place of an ending
(Houwen, 1990: 22).
Except in diplomatic editions (such as the Acts of Parliament), the modern editor generally provides punctuation and capital letters. The treatment of some letters and abbreviations has already been mentioned. Abbreviations can be expanded silently, or the interpolated letters put in italic.
For a particularly clear statement
of editorial practice, see Houwen (1990: 20-26) or (1994: I, xcvii ff.).