Books from the past
We can trace the development of English, and the way it was used, if we look at old books. Far from being ‘boring’, old books can be fascinating! Let’s work our way back through time by looking at small extracts from some of them.
19th century
Here is part of the Introduction to Select Anecdotes from Various Sources published in 1864. I have retyped it in a very small font which is very similar to the one used in the original book. It’s OK to have a good laugh at the pompous style of writing! Can you imagine someone writing like this in the 21st century?
18th century
You know that many books have an Introduction. Some have a Preface or a Foreword. In past times, a book sometimes had a Dedication in which the author dedicated the work to a famous or important person.
Here is part of the Dedication in The Spectator: Volume the Second, published in 1711. The author addresses his remarks to The Right Honourable Charles Lord Halifax. I scanned this page from my copy of the actual book. Notice how the author makes flattering remarks to his sponsor. Compare it with the way winners of Oscars and other awards talk about the people who have helped them. Would you write like this if someone had helped you, or even sponsored you, to write a book?
Here are a few points about the appearance of this page.
Ø The first thing you have to get accustomed to is the long lower case letter s. You can see that this is used only inside words. It is never used when s is the last letter of a word. It is a relic of former centuries when the handwritten letter had a long tail. It looks like a lower case letter f, but if you compare the two you will see that it does not have a complete cross-stroke like f.
Ø In the first two lines, you can see the end of a sentence which started on the previous page. That’s pretty obvious, but I thought I’d point it out.
Ø At the bottom of the page, the word ‘with’ looks like an orphan, all by itself. It is there for a reason. It is the first word on the following page. The first line of the following page is
with the active part of mankind.
This is how pages were printed in past centuries. It helped bookbinders to check that they had pages in the correct order. It also helped readers when their eyes moved from one page to the next. Do you agree that it’s a good idea? If they were reading in the evening, couldn’t they just switch the light on, to make thing easier?
Thinkabouts
1. Study the 1711 page. Notice and discuss all the ways in which it is different from books printed in the 21st century. Look very carefully at:
Ø The author’s style of writing.
Ø The vocabulary.
Ø Punctuation.
Ø The use of capital letters.
Ø Unusual lower case letters.
You noticed that the lower case letter s sometimes looks like an f. If you study them closely, you will see that they are not identical. The s does not have a complete cross-stroke in the middle like an f.
You also saw that the lower case letters c and t are joined together. The little line joining them is called a ligature. This was the style of printing in those days.
You probably noticed that a colon is used where we would put a full point (a full stop). Over the centuries, English punctuation marks have had different uses. The most recent punctuation mark to be brought into English is the apostrophe. After several centuries, it still creates problems for writers — it’s not easy to work its uses!
Upper case (capital) initials are used for a few words that the author wishes to emphasise or appear important in what he is saying. This was also common practice. If you know any German, you’ll realise that upper case initials are used for all nouns in that language.
As for the vocabulary and the writer’s style, you saw that it is very old-fashioned! He uses long sentences, and to modern readers it almost looks as if he’s showing off how many words he knows. However, he is merely using the flowing, poetic style which was customary at the time.
2. Notice that ‘foreword’ is not ‘forward’. What can you find out about the differences between a preface, a foreword and an introduction? Who writes them, and why?