Chapter 9 - The Standardisation of Etymological Spelling

Summary

Chapter 9 focuses on the analysis of etymological spelling, and especially the insertion of <b>, <c>, <d>, <l> and <p> in Early Modern English word forms, the development of alternant <aun> and <ph>, and the rationalisation of <er>/<ar>. My results indicate that etymologised spellings appeared increasingly more markedly between the early and the mid-sixteenth century, while only a percentage of the forms which developed during these decades continued until the seventeenth century. My investigation shows that the etymologising developments in epenthetic graphemes, <aun>, <ph> and <er>/<ar> spread out not gradually, from high-frequency words to lower-frequency ones, but rather at largely comparable frequencies across most of the English vocabulary, albeit somewhat erratically and haphazardly across legitimate and illegitimate etymologies. The discussion reflects upon the development of the etymological spellings, focusing especially on the potential interaction between authors and printers as agents responsible for the modern standardisation during the process of in-house proofreading. Overall, I suggest, changes occurring in the English printing industry were primarily responsible for the different etymologising trends between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries.