Appendix B: Early Letter Forms

According to rule OH, earlier forms of letters and diacritical marks are usually converted to their modern forms. This appendix lists the most frequently occurring of these cases and provides advice in the cases that are special in some way. (For the treatment of the letters i/j and u/v, see the next section.)

? : appears at times with the vertical bar bent backward: transcribe it in its modern form (d)

? : appears at times roughly in the shape of the number 2: transcribe it in its modern form (r)

? : appears at times elongated: transcribe it in its modern form (s)

ligatures (?, ?, ? the double-s or scharfes-s, etc.): transcribe the letters separately, in their modern form (ct, st, ss, etc.). Exceptions are enumerated in rule 0H

small e and o superscript over vowels: transcribe the e as an umlaut; transcribe the o as a small superscript circle, which is available in the MARC character set.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. The general advice should be followed for any case not mentioned: convert to the modern form if there is one; retain the older form when there is a special reason for doing so beyond ordinary fidelity to the source and the older form is available in the MARC character set.

Some knowledge of the history of printing as it applies to the letter i/j and u/v is helpful when applying the provisions of OH.

From the beginning of printing up to about the mid-17th century, the alphabet employed by printers commonly included i and j as simply two ways of printing the same letter: the understanding of these two forms as representing two separate letters is a modern development. The same is true of u and v; they were the two forms of a single letter. The uppercase employed by these printers usually included only the single capital letter I (in the form of a modern capital I in roman type, but more in the form of a modern capital J in italic or gothic type) and only the single capital V (in the form of a modern capital V in roman type, but more in the form of a modern capital U in italic or gothic type). The double V, in the modern for W, was absent from the alphabets used for Latin and romance languages. When the language being printed required its use, the printer employed VV in uppercase and vv or uu in lowercase. (It was often printed as a separate letter in blackletter texts in Germanic languages, including English.)

The use of the forms i and u for vowels and j and v for consonants is a distinction practically unknown in early printing. The printer usually selected the lowercase form of the letter, not by pronunciation, but according to conventional position within the word. The practice actually varies somewhat from printer to printer, but there were national or regional preferences for one pattern of practice or another. The practice of the individual printer can usually be discovered by an observation of the internal text (preferably in the same type as the title page ) of the publication, and the clearest perception of these patterns is a natural by-product of handling the books and observing the conventions of the printers, book by book. In other words, the information provided here gives knowledge that will be only partially helpful; experience is the other, more essential teacher.

The following schema illustrates some patterns in printing and shows the cataloger’s transcription on the basis of the particular pattern and is based on the example of two words printed in solid capitals in a title as IVS VERVM or as JUS UERUM:

A title page may include a word or words printed mainly in lowercase or small capitals but ending with a capital I, e.g., TiberI. This final capital I should be left in capital form and not converted to lowercase. Some printers occasionally employed the final single capital I, instead of ii or II, to indicate the genitive, vocative or locative case of a second-decision Latin noun or adjective with a stem in -io. Since this usage is not merely typographic but actually affects meaning, the capital must be left in that form.

Capital letters appearing apparently at random on a title page or colophon may represent a chronogram (see 4D2 ). These letters should be left in capital form and not converted to lowercase.

Bibliography:

Bowers, Fredson T. Principles of Bibliographical Description. Princeton, 1949, p. 162-163, 180-182. [1986 reprint: Winchester, U.K.: St. Paul’s Bibliographies]

Cowley, J.D. Bibliographical Description and Cataloguing. London: Grafton & Co., 1939, p. 62-53.

Esdaile, Arundell. A Student’s Manual of Bibliography. London: George Allen & Unwin & the Library Association, 1931, p. 259-261.

McKerrow, R.B. An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927, p. 152-154, 310-312. [Available in various reprints]

McKerrow, R.B. "Some notes on the letters i, j, u and v in sixteenth-century printing." The Library, 3rd Series, no. 1 (1910), p. 239-259.

See also:

Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books: Contents