The
English
Documents

• Return to Main Screen
• Paleography Introduction
•  
• English Documents
  • Introduction
  • Techniques & Tools
    • Scripts
    • Abbreviations
    • Numbers, Calendar, Currency
    • Latin
  • Alphabet
  • Documents
    • Document Collection
    • Browse By Record Type
      • Church
      • Court
      • Military
      • Poor Law
      • Probate
      • Property
      • Miscellaneous
    • Browse By Year
      • 16th Century/ 1500-1599
      • 17th Century/ 1600-1699
      • 18th Century/ 1700-1799
      • 19th Century/ 1800-1899
  • Land, Leases, & Litigation
  • Interactive Exercises
    • Short Interactive Exercises
      • Easy
      • Intermediate
      • Hard
    • Full Exercises
      • 1-1
      • 1-2
      • 1-3
  • Bibliography

When reading old documents one of the first things you might notice are spelling inconsistencies. In early records words were spelled phonetically and could be spelled and abbreviated differently in the same document. Spelling did not become standardized until the 19th century with the availability and circulation of dictionaries and the expansion of compulsory education. The famous quote from Thomas Jefferson, "You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word," should be a good indication of what to expect when reading old records.[1]

Some of the information on this page, including direct quotes (unless otherwise noted), was drawn from Palaeography for Family and Local Historians by Hilary Marshall (Phillimore, 2004). All images come from the Land Indenture/Title Deed Collection located at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University.

Below are several types of abbreviations found in English documents:

The Thorn

A common popular misconception of archaic forms of English is to use “ye” instead of “the”. In early manuscripts, the y-looking letter form, however is actually a combination letter termed a “thorn”. The original character for the thorn was Þ and it indicated “th”. When the printing press was introduced in England in the late 15th century, however, the type came from the Continent, where the letter was not used. The typesetters used the letter y instead, because when handwritten, the loop of the thorn was often not connected and looked similar to the y.

The Ampersand

The ampersand character and the abbreviation are still used today to save time and space in writing. In some documents it may appear as a large hook of backwards comma. Et cetera will have an additional stroke to the ampersand and is best recognized in context, usually at the end of a list.

​

Contractions

An abbreviation by contraction is formed by writing the first and last letters of the word and eliminating the middle letters. For example, the word "deceased" was often abbreviated as "deced", often with a tilde-like symbol or a straight line above the abbreviation. Below are some examples of this type of abbreviations taken from the records.

​

The “P” prefixes: Pre, Par, Per, Pro

According to Marshall, "there are special contraction symbols specifically used with the letter P." The P prefixes are uniquely characterized for each prefix, while the different scribes put their own flare on how they have penned the prefix, the principal stoke style represented is for each specfic prefix

"When the pen stroke for the stem of the p extends down and crosses back over the stem in a horizontal stroke, this usually represents per, or at time par."

ABBREVIATION	MEANING	SAMPLES FROM DOCUMENT
pish	parish
pson	person could also be parson depend on context
pte	parte
pmitt	permitt
pcell	parcell
pticulers	particulers

Superscript

Superscripted letters were a common practice for scribes, and a type of contraction. When a letter was superscripted it often ment the ommision of one or more letters, with the first letters written on the base line and the last one or two letters are written above the base line in a smaller size.

ABBREVIATION	MEANING	SAMPLES OF DOCUMENT
executrs	executors
Admrs	Adminstrators
ffells	ffellows

Titles and occupations

Titles and occupations are used so often in English documents that they are were most often contracted. Below are several examples:

​

Some of the information on this page was drawn from Palaeography for Family and Local Historians by Marshall. All images come from the Land Indenture Collection located at BYU Special Collections.