18.1 Introduction
“I’ll call for pen and ink, and write my mind.” This sentence from Shakespeare (1 H6, V, 3, 66, see Reference BurnsBurns 2000) is a neat way to introduce our readers to the content and scope of this chapter. These are the Earl of Suffolk’s words for when, in love with Margaret, he doubts whether or not to free her, and appeals for a pen and ink to let his intentions flow on a piece of paper. The present chapter examines the relationship between ‘pen and paper’ in the composition of early English manuscripts and printed books, on the basis of the hypothesis that some common practice on the matter was shared by scribes and printers alike. Old manuscripts and printed books are taken as the source of evidence to discuss the concept of spacing and distribution. The term distribution is not simply taken as the mere arrangement of the sentences and paragraphs on the page, but it is rather conceived in its widest sense referring to the writers’ decisions both in the preparation of the writing surface and in the writing process itself.
This chapter discusses the arrangement of the external aspects of the text together with the distribution of internal features associated with spacing in Late Middle English (1350–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700). The focus is on the English language and Early Modern English in particular as the period when the standards on spacing were on the rise. In the following, we describe the rationale behind the composition of early English handwritten documents, reconsidering aspects such as the preparation of the writing surface, the dimensions of the folio, margin conventions, frame and line ruling, the use of columns (and its association with the formality of the text) and line justification. Next, we explain the main notions of the concept of spacing, describing different types of line-final word division and its specific variants, and providing a general overview of existing research in the literature. Finally, two case studies are offered where we discuss the emergence of spacing in the Middle Ages and its development throughout the Early Modern English period, paying attention to both handwritten and printed sources. These studies are carried out by considering divisions both in the middle and at the end of a line. Divisions in the middle of a line, on the one hand, are described in light of the evidence of nominal and adjectival compounds, reflexives, adverbs and words which, although independent lexemes, are irregularly found together in the period. Line-final word division, in turn, considers the typology of boundaries, whether morphological, phonological or anomalous. We argue that it is from narrow case studies like these that we can effectively contribute to knowing more about our general understanding of orthographic distribution.
18.2 Formatting and Layout
The preparation of the writing surface was a time-consuming process according to which animal skin (sheepskin was more frequently used in Britain than goatskin) was turned into parchment as a result of the cleaning and the subsequent dehairing of the material. In itself, creating parchment was an arduous and lengthy process which made the resulting material a valuable product, a luxurious item which could only be afforded by the elite of the time. Parchment, and writing materials in general, had limited availability and was therefore an expensive item at the time. Consequently, careful planning of its use was crucial in order to make the most of this writing surface (Reference Clemens and GrahamClemens and Graham 2007: 15–17).
In this context, columns were a recurrent practice among medieval and, to a lesser extent, Early Modern English scribes, although “in the fifteenth century a renewed preference among some for layouts with long lines is detectable, probably under Italian Humanistic influence” (Reference 676DerolezDerolez 2003: 37). Even though there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the disposition of columns and the formality of the text, the use of columns is more strongly associated with particular registers and genres, especially those considered to have a higher level of formality. As far as genre is concerned, the use of columns is especially frequent in high-esteemed literary compositions, poetry in particular, often highly decorated and colored specimens. This is the case of MS Hunter 7, containing a decorated version of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis ; MS Hunter 197, housing a copy of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales ; or MS Hunter 5, a precious version of John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes (Reference CrossCross 2004).
As far as register is concerned, the presence of columns is also more widely connected with texts with a higher level of formality, and medical writing may be the best testimony to this scribal preference. Theoretical and surgical treatises were considered the most academic registers and belonged to the learned tradition, being mostly translations of learned Latin medicine with an academic origin designed for physicians of the highest class and (barber) surgeons. Remedies, in turn, portray the language used by lay people, as they were collections of recipes that families stored for their use at home. While the latter are seldom rendered in two columns for the purposes of private use, some theoretical/surgical treatises are often found with columns depending on the circulation and value of the item at hand. MS Hunter 95, for instance, is a beautiful two-column composition housing a Late Middle English version of the Book of Operation. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, however, the use of columns decreased among Early Modern English scribes.
The dimensions of the margins are in most cases a matter of convention in early English manuscript composition insofar as the foot margin is usually twice as wide as that at the top, and the side margins are greater than the top and less than the foot (Reference JohnstonJohnston 1945: 72). By doing this, medieval scribes ensured that “the height of the written space equalled the width of the page” (Reference De Hamelde Hamel 1992: 21). Regardless of its dimension, in a regular quire, consisting of eight leaves, the upper and lower margins measure approximately 20 mm and 35–40 mm, respectively, while the left and right margins amount to c. 15–20 mm and 15–35 mm. This can be taken as a milestone both in Late Middle English texts, as in MS Hunter 497 (Reference Calle-Martín and Miranda-GarcíaCalle-Martín and Miranda-García 2012: 26), MS Wellcome 542 (Reference Calle-Martín and Castaño-GilCalle-Martín and Castaño-Gil 2013: 29) or MS Hunter 328 (Reference Calle-MartínCalle-Martín 2020: 15); and Early Modern English specimens, as in MS Wellcome 3009 (Reference Criado-PeñaCriado-Peña 2018: 16) or MS Rylands 1310 (Reference Calle-MartínCalle-Martín 2020: 16). Figure 18.1 shows the average dimension of a manuscript folio with the approximate size of the margins and the actual writing space as found in the fifteenth-century English translation of Macer Floridus’s De viribus herbarum (Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 497).
Figure 18.1 Margins and writing space in MS Hunter 497
Ruling techniques changed over time, however. Drypoints were used until the eleventh century, a method which consisted in pressing into the page with a sharp instrument, where only one side of the page needed to be ruled. Leadpoint, in turn, was in vogue until the thirteenth century and it was distinguished by its grey or reddish-brown color and, contrary to drypoint rule, it required the ruling of both sides of the page. Finally, ink began to be in use from the fourteenth century, often with the same color as the running text, even though this practice became less and less fashionable from the fifteenth century and, since then, only frame ruling remained (Reference 676DerolezDerolez 2003: 55, Reference Clemens and GrahamClemens and Graham 2007: 16–17). Even though frame ruling was a consistent practice in early English manuscripts, line ruling was more often associated with valuable copies to ensure that the text had a visually appealing layout (Reference Calle-MartínCalle-Martín 2020: 17). The number of lines of a handwritten composition depended on the size of the volume.
The history of English handwriting in the period 1400–1600 is characterized by the replacement of the Anglicana hand by the Secretary script, the latter more cursive and considerably smaller in size (Reference RobertsRoberts 2005: 4, Reference Calle-Martín, Miranda-García and GonzálezCalle-Martín 2011b: 35–54). The progressive spread of the Secretary hand had a crucial impact on the design of the manuscript page leaving more room for running text. Both from the fifteenth century, the scribe of MS Hunter 497 is consistent as to the use of a hybrid Anglicana hand, while MS Hunter 328 is rendered with a more cursive hand, allowing for more running words per page.
Line justification is also a matter of scribal choice in handwritten documents, depending in most cases on the value of the copy at hand. Even though there is a general commitment to make the most of the writing space, it is a fact that valuable copies are particularly respectful to the inner and outer margins, and line-fillers are frequent devices to avoid a blank line after the closing of a paragraph. Less valuable copies are more concerned with the importance of the writing space and, as a consequence, show a frequent use of margins for the running text – to the detriment of word division – together with a wider use of abbreviations. Printed texts, on the other hand, are obviously more prone to line justification, while at the same time avoided the use of line-fillers for visual purposes.
In addition to the size and spacing conventions of the written material, formatting was obviously the only means to provide the written text with some kind of organization. Decorative material was often employed to indicate major textual divisions in the text. The litterae notabiliores stand out as visual indicators of the beginning of a sentence, becoming “the primary way in which the reader was guided through the text” (Reference Smith, Stenroos and ThengsSmith 2020b: 212). The cost of doing such hand-rubrication was then enormous and the use of underlining and/or colored ink, red in particular, were also frequent practices to indicate textual divisions within the text, thus guiding the eye of the reader to the important parts of the text. A hierarchy of scripts was also a common device for macrostructural purposes, both in handwritten and printed documents, where “square capitals [were used] for main headings, uncials for lower level headings and initial words, and Caroline minuscule for the main text” (Reference Smith, Myers and HarrisSmith 1994: 36–38; Reference BaronBaron 2001: 22). MS Hunter 135, housing a sixteenth-century English version of De chirurgia libri IV (ff. 34r–73v), displays this kind of typographical arrangement of the text where section titles are reproduced with an italic script while the running text is rendered with a fairly legible Tudor Secretary hand.
Punctuation also played a decisive role in the organization of the text, understood as a means to divide the text into pages, lines and paragraphs. It was considered pragmatically and, besides pages and lines, the paragraph was taken as the earliest unit of punctuation, often unaccompanied by any internal mark of punctuation until the seventh century (Reference Lennard and JuckerLennard 1995: 65–68). Written punctuation started thenceforth and by the eleventh century there was a set of symbols which, with overlapping uses, were devised for the expression of particular needs. The Middle Ages then stand out as a crucial period in the development of the system of punctuation in the sense that it consisted of overlapping repertoires of marks associated with a particular scriptorium or geographic area until the eleventh century, and of “a general repertoire with a wide European distribution” from the twelfth to the fourteenth century (Reference Lennard and JuckerLennard 1995: 66). In light of this, apart from the paragraph itself, different punctuation marks appeared to create the mise-en-page, thus making the text more readable. The list includes, for instance, the paragraphus § and the paraph ¶ along with other symbols such as the virgule /, the double virgule // and the perioslash ./, each of these adopting various forms (.//, //., etc.). The paragraphus was mostly found as an indicator of divisions in a text. The paraph carried the pragmatic function of “a macro structural marker to indicate particular relationships within the paragraph as well as the major sections and subsections within the text” (Reference Calle-Martín and Miranda-GarcíaCalle-Martín and Miranda-García 2005: 33). The virgule, and its variant forms, were recurrent symbols with section titles while at the same time also committed to the separation of sense units which are semantically and syntactically independent. The period, in turn, also served to circumscribe some key terms of a text, apart from other kinds of sentential, clausal and phrasal relationships.
18.3 Spacing: Word Division
The term word division is used to denote the threefold rendering of some words in historical compositions, which may appear either joined, hyphenated or separated, although the latter overwhelmingly predominated (Reference TannenbaumTannenbaum 1930: 146). In itself, word division is relevant to orthography in view of its connection with punctuation. The phenomenon dates back to the sixth century, when Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes contributed decisively to the development of the system of distinctiones. These scribes were in need of visual marks in order to understand Latinate texts, most of them written in scriptura continua, and turned to the practice of word separation, with spaces and periods used therein (Reference Clemens and GrahamClemens and Graham 2007: 83–84, Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and RutkowskaCalle-Martín 2011a: 18). The phenomenon, however, has been traditionally shunned in most sources and the only references to it in the literature are limited to mentioning the lack of an orthographic standard until the first half of the sixteenth century (Reference Denholm-YoungDenholm-Young 1954: 70, Reference PettiPetti 1977: 31).
Line-final word division is defined as the breaking of a word at the end of a line and, unlike divisions in other positions, the rules determining it differ according to phonological and morphological factors. The issue is also ignored in traditional handbooks on paleography, where its omission is assumed to be the rule rather than the exception. The only references to the topic reveal that there is no consensus, neither at a phonological nor at a morphological level, governing line-final word division among English penmen. The splitting of words at the end of lines is considered arbitrary in handwriting and the only precept “seems to have been that not less than two completing letters could be carried over to the second line” (Reference HectorHector 1958; see also Reference Denholm-YoungDenholm-Young 1954: 70, Reference PettiPetti 1977: 31). The modern tenets have discredited the traditional approaches proposing the existence of conventional patterns. The topic is open to interpretation, however. In Old English (OE), Reference HladkýHladký (1985a: 73) states that the main word division principle is basically morphological, including suffixed, prefixed and compound words. Lutz, in turn, affirms that the division of polysyllabic words reflects their phonological organization into syllables, thus assuming that line-final word division is based on the syllabification of OE (Reference LutzLutz 1986: 193; see also Reference Burchfield, Godden, Gray and HoadBurchfield 1994: 182). There is not a univocal attitude in the period in view of the distinctive practices of scribes and, as such, the evidence found in these modern approaches cannot be generalized to represent the whole period.
To cope with this limitation, the last decade has witnessed a number of statistical analyses (Reference Calle-Martín, Vera and CaballeroCalle-Martín 2009, Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and Rutkowska2011a) addressing the phenomenon in terms of the particular choices of scribes to provide empirical data that may be eventually compared with other texts. From a methodological viewpoint, the rationale used for these investigations stems from Reference HladkýHladký’s (1985a, Reference Hladký1985b) approach to the study of word division in some historical texts, proposing a classification of the topic in terms of the ultimate force of splitting, that is, morphology and phonology. The former recurs to the traditional word-formation principles of prefixation, suffixation and composition, as in vn-curable, sauour-ing and som-what, respectively. The latter divides words in terms of their actual pronunciation where the following types of phonological rules stand out: (i) the CV-CV rule, that is, the division after an open syllable, as in sy-newes ; (ii) the C-C rule, the division between two consonants, as in mer-curye ; (iii) the V-V rule, the division between two conjoining vowels, as in api-um ; (iv) the ST rule, either the separation or the preservation of the cluster -st, as in sub-stance or was-tyng ; (v) the CL rule, the keeping together of a consonant and a liquid on condition that both belong to the same syllable, as in par-brakynge ; and (vi) the CT rule, the division between the pair -ct, as in elec-tuaryes. These statistical analyses have also added a third group (Reference Calle-Martín, Vera and CaballeroCalle-Martín 2009: 38, Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and Rutkowska2011a: 18) so as to account for those anomalous divisions which fall apart from this twofold classification, as in ointme-nt.
18.4 Case Studies
The present section explores the emergence of spacing in the Middle Ages and its development throughout the Early Modern English period, paying attention to both handwritten and printed sources. Spacing is examined here by considering divisions both in the middle and at the end of a line (see Subsections 18.4.1 and 18.4.2, respectively). Two case studies are used for explanatory purposes here to show that the methodology proposed for researching orthographic distribution works, and the focus on word division specifically is then offered as an example. The data used as source of evidence come from the two components of The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose, both The Málaga Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose (for the period 1350–1500) (Reference Miranda-García, Calle-Martín, Moreno-Olalla, González Fernández-Corugedo and CaieMiranda-García et al. 2014) and The Málaga Corpus of Early Modern English Scientific Prose (for the period 1500–1700) (Reference Calle-Martín, Moreno-Olalla, Esteban-Segura, Marqués-Aguado, Romero-Barranco, Thaisen and 663RutkowskaCalle-Martín et al. 2016). These corpora contain material from the three branches of early English scientific writing: specialized treatises, surgical treatises and recipe collections (Reference Voigts and EdwardsVoigts 1984, Reference Taavitsainen, Tyrkkö, Taavitsainen and PahtaTaavitsainen and Tyrkkö 2010). These two components of the Málaga corpus contain transcribed material using semi-diplomatic conventions to render an accurate reproduction of the original handwriting. In this fashion, the spelling, lineation, paragraphing, word division and punctuation have been exactly reproduced as by the scribal hand, while abbreviations have been systematically expanded in italics. The corpus has been automatically annotated with CLAWS7 (Constituent Likelihood Word-tagging System), developed by the UCREL team at the University of Lancaster (Reference Garside, Garside, Leech and SampsonGarside 1987, Reference Garside, Smith, Garside, Lech and McEneryGarside and Smith 1997),Footnote 1 whose tagset incorporates more than 160 tags together with particular labels for the different marks of punctuation (Reference Romero-Barranco, Fuster-Márquez, Gregori-Signes and Santaemilia RuizRomero-Barranco 2020).Footnote 2
The printed material comes from the Early English Books Online corpus, which contains a total of 755 million words from 25,368 texts from the period 1470–1700. Even though it includes material from a wide range of fields, such as literature, philosophy, history, religion, science and politics, among others, the present case study exclusively relies on the scientific component of the corpus so that all the data belong to the same typology of texts. The EEBO corpus has been supplemented with a small collection of texts on pharmacy, botany, alchemy and medicine from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we have manually compiled following the Málaga Corpus editorial model (Reference BrunschwigBrunschwig 1528, Reference DodoensDodoens 1578, Reference RuscelliRuscelli 1595 and Reference HartmanHartman 1696). The size and format of EEBO allows for the examination of particular spelling features from a chronological perspective, word division included, both in the middle and at the end of a line.
The compilation of data has been a straightforward process. As far as the Málaga Corpus is concerned, the corpus contains a semi-diplomatic transcription of the original manuscript text. A simple search was required to obtain the instances of word division in the middle of the line as the modernized version of the corpus allows the generation of all the allomorphs of a given lexeme. Line-final breaks, in turn, were automatically generated by searching for the hyphen – and the double hyphen =, which are the punctuation symbols used to mark these breakings in handwritten texts. As far as printed texts are concerned, the instances of division in the middle of a line were generated automatically through the Sketch Engine interface,Footnote 3 and, in this case, different searches were needed to comply with the orthographic variation of Early Modern English. Next, line-final word division instances were automatically generated by means of the hyphen, which is also found to mark these breakings in printed texts. On quantitative grounds, divisions in the middle of a line have been represented with percentages (%) while the distribution of line-final word splits has been analyzed with normalized frequencies (n.f.).
18.4.1 Word Division
Compounds are taken to be the lexemes consisting of two independent lexemes (Reference BauerBauer 2003: 40). Word division is here described according to the evidence provided by nominal or adjectival compounds (i.e. headache, toothache, aquavitae, rosemary, lukewarm and so on), compound adverbs (i.e. therewith, within, inward and so on), reflexive pronouns (i.e. myself, himself, themselves and so on) and other forms unequivocally rendered as two different lexemes in present-day English, but together for some time in the history of English (i.e. shall be and as much, among others). Figure 18.2 shows the distribution of nominal and adjectival compounds in the period 1350–1700, where the joined version of words is observed to proliferate over time. While there is a major preference for the separation of both members of the compound (72.2 percent) in the fifteenth century, the sixteenth century stands out as a transitional period marking the progressive decline of the separated form (58.8 percent) together with the rise of the joined form (38.2 percent). The seventeenth century shows the eventual standardization of the joined spelling with a rate of 66.2 percent, contrasting with the sporadic occurrence of both the hyphenated (17.7 percent) and the split forms (16.1 percent) in handwritten texts. Figure 18.3, in turn, presents the same state of affairs in printed documents inasmuch as split forms significantly predominate over joined forms in the sixteenth century (with rates of 71.1 percent and 28.1 percent, respectively). In the seventeenth century, however, there is a significant rise of joined forms (51.9 percent), which eventually outnumbered the occurrence of split forms (40.8 percent). Still, figures are surprisingly high if compared with their occurrence in handwritten documents.
Figure 18.2 Nominal and adjectival compounds in handwritten texts (%)
Figure 18.3 Nominal and adjectival compounds in printed texts (%)
The standardization of these compounds is not in all cases systematic as the adoption of the joined form seems to behave differently across the different compounds. There is, on the one hand, a group of compounds like aquavitae, rosemary and quicksilver, among others, which are systematically represented in its full form at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with a minute occurrence of the separated and the hyphenated forms. There is, on the other hand, another set of compounds which are more reluctant to the adoption of the joined form and more bound to appear with the hyphen well into the seventeenth century. The list includes the -ache compounds (i.e. headache, toothache) together with other combinations such as lukewarm.
Figures 18.4 and 18.5 show the threefold representation of reflexives in handwritten and printed documents, respectively. As far as handwriting is concerned, a similar trend of development is observed with the final standardization of the full form of the reflexive at the beginning of the seventeenth century. There is an outstanding preference for the split form of the reflexive throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with rates of 76.9 percent and 67.9 percent, respectively, followed by the joined form (23.1 percent and 30.3 percent), while the use of the hyphenated form is sporadic. In the seventeenth century, the results again show the rise of the joined form (46.1 percent), which outnumbers the split (39.1 percent) and the hyphenated spellings (14.7 percent), although the split form of these reflexives is still considerably high in these texts. Printers, on the other hand, present a different attitude toward reflexives insofar as the split form is significantly preferred both in the sixteenth (94.1 percent) and the seventeenth centuries (68.7 percent). Even though there is a significant rise of the full version of reflexives in the seventeenth century (31.2 percent), the split form shows a wider distribution in printed documents.
Figure 18.4 Reflexive forms in handwritten texts (%)
Figure 18.5 Reflexive forms in printed texts (%)
There is also room for morphological variation in the distribution of reflexives depending on the person of the verb, with three clear diachronic tendencies. First and second person pronouns are systematically separated in Late Middle (1350–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700) (i.e. my self, your self, our selves, your selves) both in handwritten and printed texts, with just occasional occurrences of the hyphenated and the joined spellings (i.e. my-self, myself). Third person plural pronouns, in turn, present another trend. Even though the split spelling is clearly the choice in the fifteenth-century (i.e. them selves), the full form begins to slightly outnumber the others in the sixteenth century, becoming the standard spelling at the turn of the following century (i.e. themselves). Third person singular pronouns would lie somewhere in between the previous tendencies with the preference for the split form throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the rise of the joined form in the seventeenth century. The two spellings, himself and him self, are then found to have a balanced distribution throughout that century.
Figures 18.6 and 18.7 present the development of the spellings of the adverbs afterward, inward, outward, therewith and within together with the preposition without in handwritten and printed texts. These items are found to be somewhat more advanced in the standardization process with the adoption of a systematic form already in the sixteenth century. Adverbs are usually represented either joined or separated in the fifteenth century, with rates of 57.8 percent and 42.1 percent, respectively. One century later, however, the split form declines, leaving these words with an unequivocal spelling. The full form becomes general practice among penmen and printers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A different tendency is observed for lexemes which appear together without any apparent justification. This is particularly the case of combinations like asmuch and shalbe, the latter “found capriciously till the seventeenth century” (Reference Denholm-YoungDenholm-Young 1954: 70).
Figure 18.6 Other adverbs and prepositions in handwritten texts (%)
Figure 18.7 Other adverbs and prepositions in printed texts (%)
Figure 18.8 presents the distribution of these items in handwritten texts. As shown, they developed irregularly with drastic ups and downs over time. Interestingly enough, there is a widespread practice of separating these lexemes among fifteenth-century scribes with a rate of 99.1 percent of the instances. The sixteenth century, however, witnesses the rise of joined spelling with 89.1 percent and just 10.7 percent of separated instances. As in the previous cases, standardization seems to take place in the early seventeenth century, when the number of split instances surpasses the joined version with 85.9 percent of the examples. Printed texts, on the other hand, already present split spelling in the sixteenth century with a distribution of 81.8 percent and 18.2 percent of split and joined instances, respectively (Figure 18.9). The printers’ decision to avoid the joined form of these lexemes is already a consensus in the seventeenth century, with a rate of 98.2 percent of the instances.
Figure 18.8 Development of shalbe and asmuch in handwritten texts (%)
Figure 18.9 Development of shalbe and asmuch in printed texts (%)
18.4.2 Line-final Word Division
An empirical analysis of line-final word division in early English prose must necessarily stem from a statistical overview of the phenomenon in OE, the period marking off the beginning of this practice to validate the existence of a regular set of patterns among Anglo-Saxon scribes. The quantitative analysis of line-final word division comes to refute the argument of Reference HladkýHladký (1985a: 73) that the major principle determining divisions at the end of the lines in OE is fundamentally morphological. As shown in Table 18.1, phonological divisions are found to outnumber morphological breaks. The former amount to 86.97 occurrences, the latter to 70.11 occurrences. Anomalous boundaries are sporadic with just 7.22 instances.
Table 18.1 Type of division in OE (n.f.)
| Phonological | 86.97 |
| Morphological | 70.11 |
| Anomalous | 7.22 |
| Total | 164.31 |
A previous study on line-final breaks in OE sheds light on the erratic distribution of the phenomenon among Anglo-Saxon writers, more bound to make the most of the writing surface at the margin. Interestingly enough, phonological splits exceed morphological ones in MS Corpus Christi College 140, containing the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Mt for short), and MS Vitelius A.xv (Vit for short), housing the Beowulf manuscript and three prose tracts dated c. 1000 (Reference RypinsRypins 1998). There is, in turn, a substantial preference for morphological line-final divisions in MS Corpus Christi College 201, housing a mid-eleventh-century version of Apollonius of Tyre (AoT for short), despite sharing the same dialect and chronology as Mt (Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and RutkowskaCalle-Martín 2011a: 19–20). Although morphological splits are more widespread among several OE writers, the available data do not corroborate the principle that morphological breakings prevail in the period, as these are ultimately dependent upon the idiosyncratic preferences of scribes.
Phonologically speaking, as shown in Table 18.2, there is a major preference for the CV-CV rule, as in cire-niscan (AoT, li); and the C-C rule, as in nih-tes (Vit, 103r, 16), although other possibilities arise depending on the word and the factual space at the margin: (i) the V-V rule, as in farise-isce (Mt, xiv); (ii) the ST rule, as in fæs-tenu (Vit, fol. 112v, 17) or arce-strates (AoT, xxii, li);Footnote 4 and (iii) the CL rule, as in wun-driende (Vit, fol. 106v, 9) and hreo-fla (Mt, vii).
Table 18.2 Phonological boundaries in OE (n.f.)
| Vit | Mt | AoT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CV-CV rule | 59.8 | 51.6 | 1.5 |
| C-C rule | 50.5 | 42.7 | 6.1 |
| V-V rule | 0.9 | 1.9 | – |
| ST rule | – | 1.9 | 0.3 |
| CL rule | 0.9 | – | – |
From a morphological standpoint, as shown in Table 18.3, prefixation is usually the most frequent type of division in OE, followed by suffixation and composition. While in Vit and AoT prefixes outnumber suffixes, in Mt suffixation slightly surpasses prefixation. Anomalous boundaries, in turn, are irregularly distributed in the OE period. In the majority of cases, this irregular separation is the result of limited space at the margin of the folios. The scribe was, to some extent, forced to break the word elsewhere, always on condition that there are at least two letters on the following line, as in hlafo-rd (Mt, xxvi). In other cases, the distortion might be explained in terms of an erroneous interpretation of the inflection by the scribe, as in heof-enum (Mt, vi).
Table 18.3 Morphological boundaries in OE (n.f.)
| Vit | Mt | AoT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prefixation | 47.7 | 24.3 | 22.9 |
| Suffixation | 41.1 | 33.7 | 4.5 |
| Composition | 10.2 | 8.4 | 3.1 |
As illustrated in Table 18.4, there is a growing importance of phonological boundaries in fifteenth-century handwritten documents coinciding with the gradual decline of morphological divisions, with just 15.02 occurrences – a negligible figure if compared with the total of anomalous divisions (Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and RutkowskaCalle-Martín 2011a: 23, see also Reference HladkýHladký 1985a: 74–75, Reference HladkýHladký 1987: 137, Reference Calle-Martín, Vera and CaballeroCalle-Martín 2009: 40). Still, there are texts where line-final word division is subjected to an array of random rules by which some words are prone to be broken almost elsewhere (Reference Calle-Martín, Thaisen and RutkowskaCalle-Martín 2011a; see also Reference Calle-Martín, Vera and CaballeroCalle-Martín 2009: 40). This is, for instance, the case of MS Peterhouse College 118 (P118 for short), which presents a significant number of anomalous splits.
Table 18.4 Type of division in ME (n.f.)
| Phonological | 151.88 |
| Morphological | 15.02 |
| Anomalous | 8.59 |
| Total | 175.49 |
From a phonological viewpoint, the CV-CV rule predominates, followed by the C-C rule (see Table 18.5). There are cases, however, where a consonant letter is spuriously added after the break, perhaps in the attempt to preserve the C-C rule rather than providing an irregular split. In MS Hunter 328 and MS Sloane 340 (H328 and S340 for short), for instance, the scribes prefer the writing of vrin-nal (S340, fol. 49v, 10) and strang-gurie (H328, fol. 26v, 23) to avoid the breaking of a syllable at the end of the line, even when other breaks would have also been possible, such as the CV-CV rule in vri-nal or strangu-rie. In addition to this, in contrast with OE, there is a growing specialization among fifteenth-century scribes in view of the slight increase in the use of V-V splits, always on condition that both vowels are pronounced, as in ve-ynes (S340, fol. 42v, 3);Footnote 5 the more frequent use of the ST rule, as in dyges-tyon (S340, fol. 40v, 24); and the appearance of the CT rule, as in lac-tea (H328, fol. 11r, 25).
Table 18.5 Phonological boundaries in ME (n.f.)
| E2622 | H328 | S340 | P118 | H497 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CV-CV rule | 56.08 | 36.52 | 104.82 | 87.81 | 127.12 |
| C-C rule | 25.67 | 10.80 | 57.24 | 29.27 | 103.47 |
| V-V rule | 2.70 | 1.86 | 8.27 | 9.06 | 6.39 |
| ST rule | – | 0.37 | 5.51 | – | 0.52 |
| CT rule | – | 0.37 | – | – | 0.27 |
From a morphological standpoint, Table 18.6 presents the distribution of morphological boundaries among fifteenth-century scribes where suffixation is observed to outnumber prefixation in most cases. This distribution is consistent, except for MS Egerton 2622 (E2622 for short) on account of its preference for prefixes, as in for-sohte (fol. 136v, 6), up-warde (fol. 155v, 8) or y-do (fol. 148r, 10).
| E2622 | H328 | S340 | P118 | H497 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefixation | 3.37 | 1.11 | 8.96 | 6.75 | 5.56 |
| Suffixation | 1.35 | 6.70 | 15.86 | 6.75 | 8.90 |
| Composition | 1.35 | 1.49 | 0.68 | – | 4.45 |
Table 18.7 presents the distribution of line-final breaks among sixteenth and seventeenth-century penmen, where phonological boundaries are negligible in comparison with its frequency in previous centuries. As shown, there is a higher tendency for line-final division in printed texts than in handwritten texts (74.21 vs. 36.78 occurrences). Morphological division, in turn, is sporadic in both types of texts. Notwithstanding these general tendencies, there is also room for variation across some pieces insofar as anomalous boundaries are found to supersede the morphological in two early sixteenth-century compositions, MS Ryland 1310 (R1310 for short) and the Booke of Dystyllacyon of Waters (Dyst for short; Reference BrunschwigBrunschwig 1528), in particular.
Table 18.7 Type of division in EModE (n.f.)
| Handwriting | Printing | |
|---|---|---|
| Phonological | 36.78 | 74.21 |
| Morphological | 11.71 | 9.52 |
| Anomalous | 6.70 | 5.66 |
| Total | 55.19 | 89.39 |
As far as phonological divisions are concerned, Tables 18.8 and 18.9 show that the CV-CV and the C-C rules are, as expected, the most widespread boundaries both in handwriting and printing, with all the other rules lagging well behind. There are, however, exceptions to this rule in some texts. For instance, the C-C rule outnumbers the CV-CV rule in MS Ferguson 7 (FER7 for short), housing an early-seventeenth-century handwritten extract of The Secrets of Alexis of Piemont and A Niewe Herbal or Historie of Plants (AoP and NH for short, respectively; Reference RuscelliRuscelli 1595, Reference DodoensDodoens 1578); this is interpreted as an erratic practice of the scribe given the preference for the CV-CV rule in the printed versions of the same text. Apart from the preference for CV-CV, both handwritten and printed sources show a higher level of specialization in view of the constrained distribution of the V-V rule, on the one hand, and the ST rule, on the other, as in indige-stion (R1310 fol. 3r, 34), ipo-stasis (R1310 fol. 11v, 22), Ma-sterwort (FPh, p. 26) and so on. Likewise, there is a rebirth of the CL rule in the period, becoming more recurrent in printed compositions, NH and FPh, in particular (Reference DodoensDodoens 1578; Reference HartmanHartman 1696). In handwriting, MS Hunter 95 (H95 for short) stands out on account of its relative high frequency, as in Com-frey (fol. 1v, 55) and con-tractum (fol. 10r, 3).
Table 18.8 Phonological boundaries in EModE handwritten texts (n.f.)
| R1310 | H135 | H95 | FER7 | W6812 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CV-CV rule | 27.53 | 15.22 | 16.07 | 4.96 | 32.56 |
| C-C rule | 21.81 | 10.55 | 4.38 | 5.52 | 25.97 |
| V-V rule | 1.03 | 1.22 | 0 | 0.82 | 2.32 |
| ST rule | 5.71 | 1.96 | 0 | 0 | 2.32 |
| CT rule | 0.51 | 0.24 | 0 | 0.27 | 0.77 |
| CL rule | 2.07 | 1.96 | 5.84 | 0.55 | 2.71 |
Table 18.9 Phonological boundaries in EModE printed texts (n.f.)
| Dyst | AoP | NH | FPh | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CV-CV rule | 51.37 | 49.87 | 63.44 | 58.99 |
| C-C rule | 38.20 | 34.91 | 55.05 | 57.79 |
| V-V rule | 1.50 | 3.11 | 0 | 4.55 |
| ST rule | 4.32 | 0.62 | 2.33 | 2.87 |
| CT rule | 0.56 | 0 | 0 | 1.43 |
| CL rule | 3.38 | 4.98 | 10.73 | 9.35 |
Finally, morphological divisions are more erratic with the absence of a standard practice across penmen and printers. Tables 18.10 and 18.11 present the distribution of morphological boundaries in handwritten and printed documents. While in MS Wellcome 6812 (W6812 for short) suffixation sharply outnumbers composition, in H135 composition surpasses suffixation. Prefixation, except for H95, becomes almost nonexistent in handwritten texts. In printed documents, however, composition is more widely disseminated, followed by suffixation and prefixation, the latter negligible across all the texts – with the only exception of FPh, where suffixation is preferred.
Table 18.10 Morphological boundaries in EModE handwritten texts (n.f.)
| R1310 | H135 | H95 | FER7 | W6812 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefixation | 1.03 | 0.98 | 2.92 | 0.55 | 0.77 |
| Suffixation | 4.15 | 3.92 | 4.38 | 2.20 | 15.50 |
| Composition | 4.15 | 7.61 | 1.46 | 2.76 | 5.42 |
Table 18.11 Morphological boundaries in EModE printed texts (n.f.)
| Dyst | AoP | NH | FPh | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefixation | 0.37 | 1.24 | 0 | 1.91 |
| Suffixation | 1.31 | 4.98 | 3.73 | 12.94 |
| Composition | 2.63 | 6.85 | 8.39 | 6.71 |
18.5 Some Follow-up Thoughts
Since the analysis section has been quite intense and data-driven, let us pause for a minute and take stock of what the whole purpose of the present contribution has been so far, before moving on to giving some follow-up thoughts. The core section of the chapter has been concerned with the emergence of spacing in the Middle Ages and its development in the Early Modern English period. After a brief description of the writing material and the arrangement of the text on the writing surface, the chapter has focused in greater detail on the concept of spacing applied to words broken in the middle and at the end of a line, as these are the two environments where both scribes and printers were bound to make choices as to the separation of a word. To this purpose, two case studies were offered, paying attention to the phenomenon both in handwritten and printed sources. As far as handwritten material is concerned, the data were drawn from the two components of The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose, both The Málaga Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose (for the period 1350–1500) and The Málaga Corpus of Early Modern English Scientific Prose (for the period 1500–1700). As for the printed material, the analyses have relied on the scientific component of the corpus of Early English Books Online together with other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific texts, providing us with fresh data to evaluate the printers’ attitude toward word division at the time.
Word division in the middle of the line has been explored in light of the evidence provided by nominal/adjectival compounds, compound adverbs, reflexives and words, which, although rendered unequivocally as two independent lexemes in present-day English, are irregularly found together in the history of English. The orthographic standardization of these words initiated in the sixteenth century and, after a period of competition between the joined and split forms, it was not until the seventeenth century that the solid version of these forms seems to be adopted. Notwithstanding this, reflexives present an unexpected development in the sense that the joined form is the rule in seventeenth-century handwritten documents, while the split form is still the dominant practice in printed texts. The shape of independent lexemes such as shall be and as much, however, was deemed to be the result of the scribes’ and printers’ choice insofar as they were mainly separated in the fifteenth century but overwhelmingly joined in the sixteenth century. Line-final word division was discussed in terms of the typology of breaking, whether morphological, phonological or anomalous. While the phenomenon is erratic in Old English to make the most of the writing surface, a more standard practice was observed among medieval and Early Modern English penmen. There is an increasing importance of phonological divisions in the period 1500–1700, with an outstanding preference for the CV-CV and the C-C rules, followed by the V-V rule. Morphological breaks, in turn, become sporadic, suffixation preferred over prefixation and composition. This rationale also seems to be the dominant pattern for breaking words at the end of a line in the early printed texts, where both the CV-CV and the C-C rules are systematically adopted by the printers.
With that said, what can our readers take from our case studies and from our chapter as a whole? We believe that they are a testimony of how little one can lay out from a scientific, linguistic point of view about orthographic distribution as a whole. Through research, however, one can glean more about the practical aspects of conducting empirical work on something as little explored as word separation, as a way to hopefully reach some encouraging generalization on at least one area of orthographic distribution. The study of word separation in historical documents is at times painstaking for the analyst in view of the number of irregular breaks which are scattered throughout the text with no other explanation than making the most of such an expensive writing surface as parchment or paper. In the absence of a standard pattern among scribes and printers, one of the methodological problems with studying word separation across time lies in the selection of data, which may, to some extent, bias the validity of the results. The different attitudes toward word division are commonplace in the historical analysis of the phenomenon and some of the texts under scrutiny have raised this same point. In spite of this shortcoming, the study of the phenomenon in handwritten texts also sheds light on some of the scribal attitudes toward word division in the medieval period, where both regular and irregular practices are found depending on the hand involved. The Renaissance, and the printing press in particular, marked off the beginning of a new era in which both scribes and printers were increasingly committed to the use of a more standard practice in the middle of the line – with a wider preference of solid forms toward the seventeenth century – and at the end of the line – with the increasing adoption of phonological divisions throughout the early modern period, the CV-CV and the C-C rules in particular.
Even though word division in the middle of the line was practically standardized toward the end of the seventeenth century, line-final word division still awaits the labor of other scholars to provide a more convincing picture of the phenomenon after the arrival of printing. This chapter has mostly shown one side of the coin, and there is still a long way ahead to gather some more evidence about it in other periods, genres or text types. The seventeenth century was crucial in the development of word division as a result of the printers’ decisive contribution. The study of the phenomenon from the community-of-practice perspective would then open new doors to assess the role of the different printing houses in the dissemination of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century practices on word division. Reference TyrkköTyrkkö (2020: 70) argues that “printers formed a tight-knit professional community where new innovations, or deviations from current standards, were immediately noticed” and this community “is a valuable one to take when it comes to Early Modern printing and thus to spelling standardisation” (Reference Tyrkkö, Kopaczyk and JuckerTyrkkö 2013).
To wrap up, then, where can future research depart from in order to understand more orthographic distribution and its relation with word division? We believe that a diachronic study is a desideratum to reconsider the actual contribution of seventeenth-century printers, the role of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prescriptive grammars and the eventual configuration of the phenomenon as it now stands in present-day English, worldwide varieties included. Genre and text-type variation would also be a revealing line of research in the light of the evidence provided by, for instance, magazine and newspaper material, which could have surely pioneered the standardization process in comparison with the timid contribution of text types such as fiction or science, among others.
18.6 Conclusion
The present chapter has provided an overview of issues relating to orthographic distribution and has then discussed the emergence of spacing in early English writing, considering the attitudes of both scribes and printers toward word division in the middle and at the end of the line. The two case studies have cast light on the existence of some level of orthographic variation throughout the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, when the phenomenon was mostly found to rely on the individual preferences of scribes. The seventeenth century, in turn, brought some fresh air to the issue with the progressive adoption of solid forms in the middle of the line and phonological divisions at the end of the line. This trend, however, is incipient at the turn of the seventeenth century, being still a very early date to propose some sort of orthographic standardization in the writing of these words. The case studies have, we hope, illuminated our knowledge about word division in early English and have provided a methodological framework for the study of word division across time. The topic surely awaits the future insight of other scholars to elucidate the moment and the forces which contributed to the eventual standardization of line-final word division in English. It is from relatively narrow areas of empirical work that, we believe, useful generalizations about such a big topic as orthographic organization can hopefully be drawn in the future.
