Another problem in reading the old writing is that the "I" and the "J" were
often identical. Sometimes you just have to guess at what the writer
intended. Usually, a bit of common sense will tell you.
-----Original Message-----
From: Research and writing about Virginia genealogy and family history.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tarter, Brent (LVA)
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 2:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: S, F, Etc.
The recent discussion of transcriptions and gravetones has tempted me to
mount a favorite hobby horse.
What in old script and printing resembles a lower-case f is an antique
character for the letter s. If you examine them carefully you will see that
they are not the same. We do not write that way now, and our typewriters
(remember them?) and computers do not even have those characters.
There are some other antique characters that we no longer use, such as
placing a tilde over a letter to indicate that it is doubled or to use a
tilde rather than an apostrophe to indicate an abbreviation; or the letter p
with a cross bar on the descender (called a tailed p) that indicates that it
is to stand for "per" or "pro" or any other short prefix beginning with the
letter p.
Best known and most often misunderstood is the antique character called a
thorn. It is a disused compression of the letters t and h but it looks very
much like a letter y. It isn't, even though many people read and transcribe
the thorn as a letter y. Our computers don't have that character, either, so
we should not have our transcriptions read "in ye good olde summer time."
The ampersand, &, is antique character that we still have and use, and it is
a compression of the letters e and t into one ligature, and it means "and"
in English because "et" means "and" in Latin.
Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]
Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
http://www.lva.virginia.gov
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html
|
