8 - Orthography and Standardisation

Summary

Chapter 8 introduces readers to the concept of spelling standardisation, offering an overview about the ways in which spelling standardisation occurred, the agents behind the modern-like developments in historical spelling, and the chronology of the process of development. For practical purposes, the discussion in this chapter focuses exclusively on historical English. It begins with the idea that historical spelling represents one of the most complex facets of linguistic standardisation, and one where disagreements exist about its overall process of development. The chapter moves on to discuss the idea that standardisation in English spelling was, for some scholars, an intra-linguistic, spontaneous process of self-organisation, and for others, a process involving many parties, including authors, readers, the printing press and linguistic commentators of the time. The final section of the chapter summarises findings from recent work that focuses on large-scale developments in printed orthography over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and overviews the role and relevance of theoreticians, schoolmasters, authors, patrons and readers in the Early Modern English book market.