The essays in this collection demonstrate that much can be learned from studying features such as word-division, printer s type, and spelling conventions. These features termed -accidentals- by W. W. Greg typically receive little attention when editors discuss how a text became actualized in a particular medieval manuscript or early modern print. To study these features, it is essential to consider a text in the context of the manuscript or print housing it, rather than a modern edition. The texts discussed range in genre from religious (AElfric s Letter to Sigeweard, and the...

This corpus-based study examines the orthographic systems in thirteen editions of the Kalender of Shepherdes (1506-1656), a comprehensive compendium of prose and verse texts of different length and on a variety of subjects, for example, astronomy, agriculture, medicine, and religion. It focuses on the variation and consistency levels in the early-modern printers' spelling practice, and evaluates the potential importance of extra-linguistic motivation for the identified regularising changes from the language authorities of the time, including lexicographers, spelling reformers,...

Written by a team of global scholars, this is the first Handbook covering the rapidly growing field of historical orthography. Comprehensive yet accessible, it is essential reading for academic researchers and students in the field, and in related areas such as morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, linguistic typology and sociolinguistics.