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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: JanSeifert on Wednesday 29 May 24 11:46 BST (UK)
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Hi, in my current text the word »several« is constantly written with a capital »S« (see picture). Was several written with a »long s« previously? I am just puzzled as it is so consistent.
Jan
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You don't say what date this is, or what sort of document.
You could post a slightly larger clip of the handwriting so more of the way this scribe writes can be seen. It's impossible really to make any sort of comment with only seeing one word out of context.
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The letter s was elongated way back so that it looked more like an f. But as goldie61 says - without a date it's hard to help.
Martin
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Sorry it took me a while to reply. The text is a 1831 scribe copy of a 1830 personal diary. The scribe was a local working in an office for the East India Company.
here is a slightly larger snippet:
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Obviously I wasn't connected with the East India Company in 1831, so I don't know if they had any strange conventions, but it looks to me a bit like a quirk of the scribe - if it's the same one, I think you said before that he wasn't a native English speaker.
One possible explanation might be that he was once told that a particular instance of 'several' should be written like that, and assumed that this applied always and everywhere. Other similar quirks in this larger extract appear to be upper-case 'M' in 'Minutes', and possibly upper-case 'K' in 'Killed'. He also seems to have omitted the 's' at the start of 'streams'.
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It is not a capital S, it is simply a long s.
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I wonder if the long s was used before a vowel and the short s was used before a consonant.
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See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
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It is not a capital S, it is simply a long s.
Quite possible. But the question remains: Why a long s/capital s only with »several«?
I have filed it under quirks now.
J.
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I wonder if the long s was used before a vowel and the short s was used before a consonant.
see Several vs. sepoys
j.
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Did you read the Wikipedia article I posted?
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Did you read the Wikipedia article I posted?
Yes I did, and thank you for that. There is also a nice one herehttps://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html (https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2006/06/rules-for-long-s.html). But those deal mainly with the printed word and note that most rules are not pertinent with the written one.
As mentioned, I have filed it by now under quirks of a peculiar scribe (really wish I had the names and backgrounds of all of them).
Jan
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"The text is a 1831 scribe copy of a 1830 personal diary. The scribe was a local working in an office for the East India Company."
What do you know about the diarist?. There might be a clue there.
Is the scribe copying the original faithfully....including the letters you see?
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I wonder if the long s was used before a vowel and the short s was used before a consonant.
see Several vs. sepoys
j.
Looking at it again I think the writer is thrifty with his full stops.
If you put a full stop before the Several and say it out loud you can see that it might just be a capital letter "S". the word sepoys does not appear at the beginning of the sentence so would not, usually, have a capital letter
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What do you know about the diarist?. There might be a clue there.
Is the scribe copying the original faithfully....including the letters you see?
Happy you asked. I have in fact now 3 (three) versions of the text, all copies (the original is probably lost or at least has not yet resurfaced). I am working on a consolidated version of the three (two are finished). So far every text has different quirks and the »several« one is only seen in one of them (so far). I do not think its a quirk of Pemberton.
Jan
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Looking at it again I think the writer is thrifty with his full stops.
If you put a full stop before the Several and say it out loud you can see that it might just be a capital letter "S". the word sepoys does not appear at the beginning of the sentence so would not, usually, have a capital letter
They all are. Very. And not only with full stops. There is also a bedlam with capital letters. Words start with Capitals, and not, in the middle of the same sentence. sentences start with small letters, there is an utter Ulta-Pulta going on. So I do in fact two Versions of all texts - first a one to one transcription where a page in the text is a page in the copy, with all the mistakes (marked) and explanation of places and words and whatsoever; then I do a second version in a readable fashion with only the most important footnotes and glosseries.
In the first version I try to mark the proper sentences with added punctuation. But even that is not always possible, as there are also missing words (and even whole lines).
I rage all the time about those bloody scribes - until I start correcting my own transliterations. There I have ALL the same mistakes! (the only difference between me and the scribes is: I do corrections). It's a tedious work I do now for about seven years (and counting).
I am getting there. But it takes time.
Thanks for the input!
Jan