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Old Style Handwriting
Pen and Ink

A Beginner’s Guide

     Deciphering old style handwriting is a skill that is acquired with time. Here, we will try to avoid those little learning roadblocks, and turn the task into a pleasure.
     The earliest written American examples of English would be the documents and correspondence from our Virginia Colony (1607 and later). Those examples fall within a time period called Early Modern English (1500-1700). We will be looking at American English handwriting and printing styles of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Table of Contents

   Old Time Given Name Abbreviations

   The Long “S”, a.k.a., the Leading “S”

   The Ampersand, “et” and the “etc”

   The Leading Double “f”, or ff = F

   The Old “I” and the Young “J”

   Type Samples from a 1610 Bible

   The “commerical at,” and the “ditto”

   “His X Mark”

   X” is for Christ

   The Double U, or VV=W

   Printed Ligatures

   The Thorny Old “Ye

   Roman Numerals

   Latin Numbers & Months

Coming Somewhere in Time

   Clerks’ Style

   Paper

   The Quill vs. the Nib

   The Ending “d”

   The “L” & “S”

   The “M” & “N”

   The Umlaut and Other Diacritical Marks






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