Re: "What's this? British city stops punctuating street signs!"
Deborah Taylor-Pearce <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.infodesign.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi, David -- > We make rules, break them > and make new ones in grammar > and many other things. As far as I can tell, most of our received rules concerning grammar & "mechanics" for the English language date from the 18th century. It is very rare indeed to find the apostrophe used much at all during C17 (especially the early decades) to mark the possessive. E.g., I've recently been reading in C17 copy-books teaching penmanship and calligraphy -- to see if there are any strictures about left- or right-handed writing/drawing -- and ran across Martin Billingsley's explanation of the "Court" hand as "... in great use in those two famous Courts of the *Kings Bench*, and *Common Pleas*." (as was typical then, both court names are emphasized with italics). Moreover, the title of Billingsley's copy-book (1st printed edn. in 1618), as given on the engraved title page, is _The Pens Excellencie or The Secretaries Delighte_ although modern library catalogs usually add apostrophes, and if you don't search on _The pen's excellencie, or, The secretaries' delighte_ chances are good you won't find anything. Unlike most modern GPS technologies, digital library catalogs tend to be less forgiving of variations in orthography. FWIW, these C17 copy-books are quite fascinating -- filled with beautiful specimens of the 6 principal "hands" then in favor -- and I'll post more about them when I finish my research. I expect C21 typophiles will find much here of interest. ;-) Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________ Use the following address to post a message to all subscribers: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your options, visit: http://list.InformationDesign.org/mailman/listinfo/infodesign-cafe For all Information Design matters: http://InformationDesign.org Problems? Write to: [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________